On Debian 12 Bookworm, Ubuntu 24.04 Noble Numbat, and macOS 14+ installs, when I try running pip3 install [something] (whether that's Ansible or some other Python tool), I get the following error message:

error: externally-managed-environment

× This environment is externally managed
╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try apt install
    python3-xyz, where xyz is the package you are trying to
    install.
    
    If you wish to install a non-Debian-packaged Python package,
    create a virtual environment using python3 -m venv path/to/venv.
    Then use path/to/venv/bin/python and path/to/venv/bin/pip. Make
    sure you have python3-full installed.
    
    If you wish to install a non-Debian packaged Python application,
    it may be easiest to use pipx install xyz, which will manage a
    virtual environment for you. Make sure you have pipx installed.
    
    See /usr/share/doc/python3.11/README.venv for more information.

note: If you believe this is a mistake, please contact your Python installation or OS distribution provider. You can override this, at the risk of breaking your Python installation or OS, by passing --break-system-packages.
hint: See PEP 668 for the detailed specification.

The error message says you can pass in the flag --break-system-packages but that sounds terrifying. I just want pip to stop nagging me, but let me manage my system dependencies like I have for many years.

I think some Python developers really want people like me to use virtual environments , but that's way too much effort when I don't really care to do that, thankyouverymuch. If you want to use venv more power to you. I just like getting stuff done on my little servers.

The easiest solution is to delete the EXTERNALLY-MANAGED file in your system Python installation:

sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/python*/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED

If using Ansible, you can add this task to your playbook prior to running any pip tasks:

- name: Ignore PEP 668 because it's silly.
  ansible.builtin.file:
    path: /usr/lib/python3.11/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED
    state: absent

Ansible also has a new break_system_packages option for the pip module, so if you just need to do it once:

- name: Install package via pip.
  ansible.builtin.pip:
    name: "package_name_here"
    state: present
    break_system_packages: true
  become: true

Note that the python3.11 version number should match whatever you have installed—it was 3.11 at the time of this blog post's writing.

• For Ubuntu 24.04, the version is python3.12 , and for 26.04, python3.13
• For macOS, use find /opt/homebrew -name EXTERNALLY-MANAGED to find the location (or find /usr/local -name EXTERNALLY-MANAGED on Intel Macs)

See this answer on Stack Overflow for more. Another interesting option is to install and use pipx , which does the grunt work of managing the venv s for you.