[easybuild] EB bootstrap fails: Installed distribution setuptools 0.9.8 conflicts with requirement setuptools>=17.1

[Ole Holm Nielsen]

I'm setting up EasyBuild on a new Intel Xeon Skylake node which is 
running CentOS 7.6.  This OS comes with python-setuptools 0.9.8:

$ rpm -q python-setuptools
python-setuptools-0.9.8-7.el7.noarch
Unfortunately the EB bootstrap script for some reason is not working, 
even though the minimum version should be 0.6, see
https://easybuild.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Installation.html#required-python-packages

I get the error shown below:

$ python bootstrap_eb.py $EASYBUILD_PREFIX
[[INFO]] EasyBuild bootstrap script (version 20180531.01, MD5: 
3968c2d88c53f96523486494bca11b4c)
[[INFO]] Found Python 2.7.5 (default, Oct 30 2018, 23:45:53) ; [GCC 
4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-36)]

[[INFO]] Installation prefix /home/modules
[[INFO]] Using modules tool specified by $EASYBUILD_MODULES_TOOL: Lmod
[[INFO]] Suitable setuptools installation already found, skipping stage 0...


[[INFO]] +++ STAGE 1: installing EasyBuild in temporary dir with 
easy_install...

[[INFO]] installing EasyBuild with 'easy_install --quiet --upgrade 
--prefix=/tmp/tmp5WimMe/eb_stage1 easybuild'
[[ERROR]] Running 'easy_install --quiet --upgrade 
--prefix=/tmp/tmp5WimMe/eb_stage1 easybuild' failed: error: Installed 
distribution setuptools 0.9.8 conflicts with requirement setuptools>=17.1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "bootstrap_eb.py", line 360, in run_easy_install
    easy_install.main(args)
  File 
"/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", 
line 1992, in main
    with_ei_usage(lambda:
  File 
"/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", 
line 1979, in with_ei_usage
    return f()
  File 
"/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", 
line 1996, in <lambda>
    distclass=DistributionWithoutHelpCommands, **kw
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/distutils/core.py", line 169, in setup
    raise SystemExit, "error: " + str(msg)
SystemExit: error: Installed distribution setuptools 0.9.8 conflicts 
with requirement setuptools>=17.1

I wonder hos the 17.1 requirement comes up?  Perhaps this requirement 
makes sense with Python 3.x?

Can anyone suggest a fix so that I can get started?

Thanks,
Ole

--
Ole Holm Nielsen
PhD, Senior HPC Officer
Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark