Found a space in the home path - why the warning and how to fix

[Gitznik]

Intro

In pipx version 1.5, we introduced the warning you're seeing, as multiple incompatibilites with spaces in the pipx home path were discovered. You may see this for the following reasons:

Why are you seeing this error

1. From pipx version 1.3 to 1.5, we were by default using a path with a space on it on MacOS. This unfortunately means, that all users that installed pipx in this time frame and were using the default behavior are seeing this warning now.
2. You set your PIPX_HOME to a path with spaces in it explicitly

Why are spaces in the PIPX_HOME path bad

The main reason we can't support paths with spaces is that shebangs don't support spaces in the interpreter path. All applications installed via pipx are installed via pip, which creates a script with a shebang at the top, defining the interpreter of the venv to use.

pip does some magic to the shebang for scripts defined as a script, that resolves this issue. Unfortunately, many libraries define their scripts as console_scripts, where pip does not perform this logic. Therefore, these scripts cannot be run if installed with pipx in a path with spaces, as the path to the venv and therefore the interpreter to use will contain spaces.

If you want to use a script installed via pipx in a shebang itself (common for example for the aws cli), you run into a similar problem, as the path to the installed script will contain a space.

See these issues for more details on the described problems: #1198, #1212

How to fix

You can generally fix this by using our default locations.

If you're really sure you want to stick to your path with spaces, you can run all pipx command with the -q flag, ignoring warnings.

Warning

While the following scripts have been tested and should work reliably, please save the result of pipx list --json before running them, so worst case at least you have all the information you need to replicate your old installs.

MacOS

cache_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_VENV_CACHEDIR)
logs_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_LOG_DIR)
trash_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_TRASH_DIR)
home_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_HOME)
rm -rf "$cache_dir" "$logs_dir" "$trash_dir"
mkdir -p ~/.local && mv "$home_dir" ~/.local
pipx reinstall-all

Linux

cache_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_VENV_CACHEDIR)
logs_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_LOG_DIR)
trash_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_TRASH_DIR)
home_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_HOME)
if [ -n "$XDG_DATA_HOME" ]; then
    data_home="$XDG_DATA_HOME"
else
    data_home="$HOME/.local/share"
fi
rm -rf $cache_dir $logs_dir $trash_dir
mkdir -p $data_home && mv $home_dir $data_home
pipx reinstall-all

Windows

Requires bash (for example git bash)

Warning

This has not been tested by a maintainer. Please let us know if this works for you.

cache_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_VENV_CACHEDIR)
logs_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_LOG_DIR)
trash_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_TRASH_DIR)
home_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_HOME)
rm -rf $cache_dir $logs_dir $trash_dir
mv $home_dir ~
pipx reinstall-all

[watercrossing]

I have never had a problem with a space in my home directory on windows with powershell. Is there a way to mute the warning?

[Gitznik]

Not at the moment. Introducing an environment variable to mute this sounds like a nice idea.

[Gitznik]

This will be available with the next release, via the PIPX_HOME_ALLOW_SPACE environment variable.

[rpdelaney]

@Gitznik Which version should I look for this feature in?

[Gitznik]

@rpdelaney this will be in the next release.

[rpdelaney]

For anyone else, the current version at the time of writing is v1.7.0

[velipso]

Your MacOS instructions fail because of spaces in the variables.

You need to add double quotes to the instructions at the bottom:

cache_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_VENV_CACHEDIR)
logs_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_LOG_DIR)
trash_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_TRASH_DIR)
home_dir=$(pipx environment --value PIPX_HOME)
rm -rf "$cache_dir" "$logs_dir" "$trash_dir"
mkdir -p ~/.local && mv "$home_dir" ~/.local
pipx reinstall-all

[Gitznik]

Updated the instructions, thanks for pointing it out 👍

[andrewluetgers]

this is what I needed thanks!

[adehad]

The edge case I have run into is when the username has a space (Windows), which is due to our company IT configuration. In these cases the suggested commands would still produce issues.

For Windows I ran the pipx environment command to get the list of all the paths used, then I ran the following to set all the relevant env vars (for the current user)

Example:

setx PIPX_HOME "V:\packages\pipx"
setx PIPX_BIN_DIR "V:\packages\.local\bin"
setx PIPX_MAN_DIR "V:\packages\.local\share\man"
setx PIPX_SHARED_LIBS "V:\packages\pipx\shared"
setx PIPX_LOCAL_VENVS "V:\packages\pipx\venvs"
setx PIPX_LOG_DIR "V:\packages\pipx\logs"
setx PIPX_TRASH_DIR "V:\packages\pipx\trash"
setx PIPX_VENV_CACHEDIR "V:\packages\pipx\.cache"
setx PIPX_STANDALONE_PYTHON_CACHEDIR "V:\packages\pipx\py"

If desired a symlink could also be created to the original home directory location. Or the pipx ensurepaths can be run again. (cmd only for mklink`)

mklink /d %USERPROFILE$\.local "V:\packages\pipx\.local\"

[Gitznik]

This is now part of our official documentation, hence I'm closing this discussion. For any other problems regarding this, please refer to the Troubleshooting section of our docs.