I was using Ansible to set up a bunch of Scientific Linux 6.6 servers running Django and I wanted to use a specific version of Django, version 1.6.5, on all servers.

Ansible makes this easy with the “pip” module:

  - name: Install pip package from yum
    yum: name={{ item }} state=present
    with_items:
    - python-pip
    - python-setuptools

  - name: Install Django 1.6.5
    pip: name=django version=1.6.5 state=present

This works great if you’re installing on a clean, empty server, but if you’re upgrading a server that had an older version of Django on it (1.6.4 in my case) Ansible will act as if it’s installing 1.6.5, but when it’s done I still had version 1.6.4.

If I try using straight PIP commands I get this:

$ pip install django==1.6.5
Downloading/unpacking django==1.6.5
  Running setup.py egg_info for package django
    warning: no previously-included files matching '__pycache__' found under directory '*'
    warning: no previously-included files matching '*.py[co]' found under directory '*'
  Requested django==1.6.5, but installing version 1.6.4
Installing collected packages: django
  Found existing installation: Django 1.6.4
    Uninstalling Django:
      Successfully uninstalled Django
  Running setup.py install for django
    warning: no previously-included files matching '__pycache__' found under directory '*'
    warning: no previously-included files matching '*.py[co]' found under directory '*'
    changing mode of /usr/bin/django-admin.py to 755
Successfully installed django
Cleaning up...

Note the line “Requested django==1.6.5, but installing version 1.6.4”. Thanks PIP!

It turned out to be a bug in PIP versions earlier than PIP 1.4, not Ansible. A little Googling turned up a page on Stackoverflow that pointed the finger at an old cached copy of 1.6.4 in the build directory, which I found in /tmp/pip-build-root.

I updated my Ansible YAML file to get rid of the temporary directory and now it works fine:

  - name: Install pip package from yum
    yum: name={{ item }} state=present
    with_items:
    - python-pip
    - python-setuptools

  - name: Remove PIP temp directory
    file: path=/tmp/pip-build-root state=absent

  - name: Install Django 1.6.5
    pip: name=django version=1.6.5 state=present

Hope you find this useful.