How to Force Pip to Reinstall the Current Version

Can I force pip to reinstall the current version?

pip install --upgrade --force-reinstall <package>

When upgrading, reinstall all packages even if they are already up-to-date.

pip install -I <package>
pip install --ignore-installed <package>

Ignore the installed packages (reinstalling instead).

How to reinstall a pip package even if it exists

You want:

pip install -r requirements.txt --upgrade --force-reinstall

--force-reinstall will remove the existing packages and then install the current versions.

--ignore-installed will just overwrite the existing with the current version, but will not remove files that were deleted in the update, meaning you may have files hanging out in your library install that aren't part of the library.

--upgrade (redundant in this case), does force-reinstall for only those packages for which there is a new version.

Pip is not working anymore after --force-reinstall pip==18.1

I solved my problem using the solution provided by: in VS Code ImportError: cannot import name 'Mapping' from 'collections':
I edited the file /home/User/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pip/_vendor/html5lib/_trie/_base.py. Then, in a terminal, I ran pip install --upgrade pip --user

Does the pip option --force-reinstall recompiles a module? (I'm trying to reinstall cx_Oracle)

The answer to your question (although you seem to have had another problem) is as follows:
It depends on the module's structure. If its setup script calls the compiler, then yes it does. Because, you see, pip modules by default do not include compiled parts, it's up to the module author to provide them.

Difference between pip install options ignore-installed and force-reinstall

--force-reinstall

Before installing a package, will uninstall it first if already installed. Pretty much the same as running pip uninstall -y dep && pip install dep for package and its every dependency.

--ignore-installed

Ignores whether the package and its deps are already installed, overwriting installed files. This means that you can have a situation where --ignore-installed does not uninstall a file, leaving it in site-packages forever. Imagine you have pkgname==1.0 that provides module spam:

$ pip show -f pkgname
Name: pkgname
Version: 1.0
...
spam.py

and the next version pkgname==2.0 renamed spam to eggs. When running pip install pkgname==2.0 --ignore-installed, spam.py will not be removed, left orphaned forever until you remove it manually.

Consequence

--force-reinstall should always be preferred; use --ignore-installed only if you know what you're doing are sure that the reinstall will overwrite currently installed files. Otherwise, you may get obscure import errors after reinstall due to stale modules still available in sys.path.

Example

Example to reproduce with the latest pip changes where all its packages were moved under _internal package: create a new virtual environment and downgrade pip to version 9:

$ mkvirtualenv testenv
$ workon testenv
(testenv) $ pip install "pip<10"

If you would now upgrade pip to the latest version via --force-reinstall, a clean upgrade is performed. Afterwards, you have the correct package structure with the _internal and _vendor:

(testenv) $ pip install pip --upgrade --force-reinstall
(testenv) $ ls -l $VIRTUAL_ENV/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pip
total 16
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff   21 19 Aug 11:47 __init__.py
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff  623 19 Aug 11:47 __main__.py
drwxr-xr-x   4 hoefling  staff  128 19 Aug 11:47 __pycache__
drwxr-xr-x  25 hoefling  staff  800 19 Aug 11:47 _internal
drwxr-xr-x  26 hoefling  staff  832 19 Aug 11:47 _vendor

If you would do the upgrade with --ignore-installed instead:

(testenv) $ pip install pip --upgrade --ignore-installed
(testenv) $ ls -l $VIRTUAL_ENV/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pip
total 392
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff     21 19 Aug 12:33 __init__.py
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff    623 19 Aug 12:33 __main__.py
drwxr-xr-x  14 hoefling  staff    448 19 Aug 12:33 __pycache__
drwxr-xr-x  25 hoefling  staff    800 19 Aug 12:33 _internal
drwxr-xr-x  28 hoefling  staff    896 19 Aug 12:33 _vendor
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff  11910 19 Aug 12:33 basecommand.py
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff  10465 19 Aug 12:33 baseparser.py
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff  16474 19 Aug 12:33 cmdoptions.py
drwxr-xr-x  16 hoefling  staff    512 19 Aug 12:33 commands
drwxr-xr-x   5 hoefling  staff    160 19 Aug 12:33 compat
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff  32153 19 Aug 12:33 download.py
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff   8121 19 Aug 12:33 exceptions.py
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff  39950 19 Aug 12:33 index.py
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff   5626 19 Aug 12:33 locations.py
drwxr-xr-x   5 hoefling  staff    160 19 Aug 12:33 models
drwxr-xr-x   6 hoefling  staff    192 19 Aug 12:33 operations
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff  10980 19 Aug 12:33 pep425tags.py
drwxr-xr-x   8 hoefling  staff    256 19 Aug 12:33 req
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff    156 19 Aug 12:33 status_codes.py
drwxr-xr-x  16 hoefling  staff    512 19 Aug 12:33 utils
drwxr-xr-x   8 hoefling  staff    256 19 Aug 12:33 vcs
-rw-r--r--   1 hoefling  staff  32010 19 Aug 12:33 wheel.py

Upgrading pip with --ignore-installed did not uninstall previous package version first, and due to new file structure, new files did not overwrite the old ones. As a consequence, old files are now orphaned and not picked up by any package; even pip uninstall pip will not remove the orphaned files. One would need to clean them up manually.

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