Pip exception TypeError: parse() got an unexpected keyword argument 'transport_encoding'

I had an old html5lib installed with –user, that would break globally installed pip from my Arch Linux system. Posting the solution that worked for me here because i couldn’t find it elsewhere:

pip uninstall html Uninstalling html5lib-0.9999999: Would remove: /home/jpic/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/html5lib-0.9999999-py3.6.egg-info /home/jpic/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/html5lib/* Proceed (y/n)? y Successfully uninstalled html5lib-0.9999999

Then, pip install --user worked again.

The full traceback was:

Traceback (most recent call last): File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/basecommand.py”, line 228, in main status = self.run(options, args) File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/commands/install.py”, line 291, in run resolver.resolve(requirement_set) File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/resolve.py”, line 103, in resolve self._resolve_one(requirement_set, req) File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/resolve.py”, line 257, in _resolve_one abstract_dist = self._get_abstract_dist_for(req_to_install) File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/resolve.py”, line 210, in _get_abstract_dist_for self.require_hashes File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/operations/prepare.py”, line 245, in prepare_linked_requirement req.populate_link(finder, upgrade_allowed, require_hashes) File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/req/req_install.py”, line 307, in populate_link self.link = finder.find_requirement(self, upgrade) File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/index.py”, line 484, in find_requirement all_candidates = self.find_all_candidates(req.name) File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/index.py”, line 442, in find_all_candidates for page in self._get_pages(url_locations, project_name): File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/index.py”, line 587, in _get_pages page = self._get_page(location) File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/index.py”, line 705, in _get_page return HTMLPage.get_page(link, session=self.session) File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/index.py”, line 833, in get_page inst = cls(resp.content, resp.url, resp.headers) File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/index.py”, line 753, in init namespaceHTMLElements=False, TypeError: parse() got an unexpected keyword argument ’transport_encoding'