How to fix `error: invalid command 'bdist_wheel'`?

Question

I try to install watchman on Ubuntu 20.04.01:

guettli@yoga15:~/tmp$ python3 -m venv pywatchman-test
guettli@yoga15:~/tmp$ cd pywatchman-test
guettli@yoga15:~/tmp/pywatchman-test$ . bin/activate

(pywatchman-test) guettli@yoga15:~/tmp/pywatchman-test$ pip install pywatchman

Fails:

Collecting pywatchman
  Using cached pywatchman-1.4.1.tar.gz (29 kB)
Building wheels for collected packages: pywatchman
  Building wheel for pywatchman (setup.py) ... error
  ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
   command: /home/guettli/tmp/pywatchman-test/bin/python3 -u -c 'import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = '"'"'/tmp/pip-install-on_zbadt/pywatchman/setup.py'"'"'; __file__='"'"'/tmp/pip-install-on_zbadt/pywatchman/setup.py'"'"';f=getattr(tokenize, '"'"'open'"'"', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('"'"'\r\n'"'"', '"'"'\n'"'"');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, '"'"'exec'"'"'))' bdist_wheel -d /tmp/pip-wheel-9np2rv_b
       cwd: /tmp/pip-install-on_zbadt/pywatchman/
  Complete output (6 lines):
  usage: setup.py [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
     or: setup.py --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
     or: setup.py --help-commands
     or: setup.py cmd --help
  
  error: invalid command 'bdist_wheel'
  ----------------------------------------
  ERROR: Failed building wheel for pywatchman
  Running setup.py clean for pywatchman
Failed to build pywatchman
Installing collected packages: pywatchman
    Running setup.py install for pywatchman ... done
Successfully installed pywatchman-1.4.1

I found a way to solve this: If I uninstall pywatchman and install wheel it works fine.

I would like to create a patch for watchman, so that this works right of the box.

How could this be solved, so that in future this does not happen any more?

Related: https://github.com/facebook/watchman/issues/876

Geostatic

Does this answer your question? Why is python setup.py saying invalid command 'bdist_wheel' on Travis CI? – Specious

@AbhigyanJaiswal 's comment should be posted and accepted as the answer to the problem. – Beane

Answer 1

Running

pip install wheel

or

pip3 install wheel

or

python3 -m pip install wheel

solved the issue for me

Impeccable

It works for me. – Gawk

Correct answer!!!! – Jester

especially when running within a virtual environment, installing wheel first makes it work. the wheel installed in the global python scope does not get used hence this has to be done first. – Caritacaritas

What does wheel do and why do I have to install a <1.0 package to get others to work? – Whippoorwill

I humbly suggest python -m pip install wheel for the sake of sanity. – Alien