Public bug reported: Tested on focal with both the focal-proposed 3.9.0-1~20.04 amd64 and focal-updates 3.9.0~rc1-1~20.04 amd64 packages.
Installed python3.9 (+deps) and python3.9-venv $ python3.9 -m venv venv The virtual environment was not created successfully because ensurepip is not available. On Debian/Ubuntu systems, you need to install the python3-venv package using the following command. apt-get install python3-venv You may need to use sudo with that command. After installing the python3-venv package, recreate your virtual environment. Failing command: ['/home/ziddey/test/venv/bin/python3.9', '-Im', 'ensurepip', '--upgrade', '--default-pip'] $ python3.9 -m ensurepip --version /usr/bin/python3.9: Error while finding module specification for 'ensurepip.__main__' (ImportError: cannot import name '_bundled' from partially initialized module 'ensurepip' (most likely due to a circular import) (/usr/lib/python3.9/ensurepip/__init__.py)) vs: $ python3.8 -m ensurepip --version pip 20.0.2 Adding --without-pip works to create the venv, but obviously without pip. Comparing /usr/lib/python3.9/ensurepip/__init__.py with the official cpython, it looks like we don't bundle. Instead, we use common python wheels in /usr/share/python-wheels/. This means that python3.9 would end up sharing the same wheels as python3.8. By commenting out: from . import _bundled everything seems to work fine. venv creates/activates, pip seemingly works as expected, despite being an older version. Or at least, it works well enough to create the venv with --upgrade-deps so that the venv will then take on current versions instead. Of course, this relies on having the wheels available via python3.8 and having them be compatible, but it's a temporary fix. $ python3.9 -m venv --upgrade-deps venv Collecting pip Downloading pip-20.2.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.5 MB) |████████████████████████████████| 1.5 MB 2.8 MB/s Collecting setuptools Downloading setuptools-50.3.1-py3-none-any.whl (785 kB) |████████████████████████████████| 785 kB 17.3 MB/s Installing collected packages: pip, setuptools Attempting uninstall: pip Found existing installation: pip 20.0.2 Uninstalling pip-20.0.2: Successfully uninstalled pip-20.0.2 Attempting uninstall: setuptools Found existing installation: setuptools 44.0.0 Uninstalling setuptools-44.0.0: Successfully uninstalled setuptools-44.0.0 Successfully installed pip-20.2.3 setuptools-50.3.1 ziddey@laurie:~/test$ . venv/bin/activate (venv) ziddey@laurie:~/test$ pip list Package Version ------------- ------- pip 20.2.3 pkg-resources 0.0.0 setuptools 50.3.1 ** Affects: python3.9 (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1900211 Title: venv creation fails: ensurepip error To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python3.9/+bug/1900211/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs