pip uninstall refuses to uninstall packags from ~/.local/lib/

[mgedmin]

• Pip version: 9.0.3 (and also 10.0.0b2)
• Python version: 2.7.14
• Operating system: Ubuntu 17.10

Description:

I was trying to uninstall a package from my ~/.local/lib/python/site-packages and pip wouldn't let me:

What I've run:

$ pip uninstall tornado
Not uninstalling tornado at /home/mg/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages, outside environment /home/mg/.venv

(/home/mg/.venv is a virtualenv created with --system-site-packages. ~/.venv/bin is in my $PATH.)

Note that pip from the virtualenv can install things into ~/.local/lib/ if I run pip install --user, it's just pip uninstall that seems to cause confusion.

(FWIW my first inclination was to run pip uninstall --user tornado, but pip uninstall doesn't accept --user.)

[piotr-dobrogost]

Raised in the past in issue #3352
Generally the implementation of schemes (and user scheme more than others) in pip is broken since the beginning; see issue #4575.

[pradyunsg]

I'm gonna let this stay open and resolve this as a part of #4575.