[Fix Guide] ImportError: cannot import name 'packaging' from 'pkg_resources'

[w-e-w]

Update

fix has bee pushed to 1.9.4 so update to make it work
but if you are one the old versions follow the guide below

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Recent update to the setuptools=70.0.0 prevents some new installs of Web UI from launching

Error:

ImportError: cannot import name 'packaging' from 'pkg_resources' (venv\lib\site-packages\pkg_resources\__init__.py)

initial issue post

• [Bug]: ImportError: cannot import name 'packaging' from 'pkg_resources' (/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py) #15863

fix PR has already been proposed

• Fix method 1 : pin Setuptools==69.5.1 #15882
• Fix method 2 : patch__pkg_resources__packaging #15883

but it might take some time for this fix to be pushed to master branch as AUTOMATIC1111 is currently not active

Simple Fix Guide

if your experiencing this issue you can perform a simple fix

1. temporarily adding this line of text to stable-diffusion-webui/requirements_versions.txt and save the file

setuptools==69.5.1

the end result should look like this (ignore the comment after #)

2. launch webui and it should be able to launch normally
3. after this you should be able to remove the modification (ctrl + z to undo in most text editors) and it should continue to work (until you reinstall)

if the modification was not removed you might have trouble updating webui in the future

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other the methods involving manually downgrading setuptools==69.5.1 will also work see

• [Bug]: ImportError: cannot import name 'packaging' from 'pkg_resources' (/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py) #15863
  but it is harder to perform for the average user