in Linux #Arch Linux

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'trimage' on Arch Linux

It's been a minute since I've last used Trimage. I probably installed it when I had initially setup Arch Linux on this system. Curious about whether or not an image that was part of a pull request I was reviewing could be improved, I launched the app.

Much to my dismay, nothing happened. No flash of the app before crashing. Not a peep of an error message. Nothing. So I tried to launch the app from the command-line:

% trimage
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/trimage", line 19, in module>
    import trimage
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'trimage'

At it's core, Trimage is a Python application. Why it was complaining that it couldn't find the module is a mystery.

Finding the trimage module

So I did some research. Arch Linux has great resources, so I checked the package's page in the Arch User Repository. Seemed like I wasn't alone, but there definitely was a lack of movement on the topic.

Some suggestions were related to removing some other dependency, and that should resolve it. It all seemed a bit more involved than I would have liked.

Often in the AUR there will be multiple copies of a package, a stable version, and a "git" version. The git version, usually suffixed with -git will pull the latest and greatest code, and not a specific version.

Arch has a trimage-git package, but I opt for the stable version when available. Since the stable version was giving me grief, I installed trimage-git, which also removed the trimage package:

:: trimage-git-1.0.6.r16.gad74684-1 and trimage-1.0.6-2 are in conflict. Remove trimage? [y/N] y

Packages (2) trimage-1.0.6-2 [removal] trimage-git-1.0.6.r16.gad74684-1

Total Installed Size: 0.16 MiB Net Upgrade Size: -0.01 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] (1/1) checking keys in keyring [#####################################################################] 100% (1/1) checking package integrity [#####################################################################] 100% (1/1) loading package files [#####################################################################] 100% (1/1) checking for file conflicts [#####################################################################] 100% (2/2) checking available disk space [#####################################################################] 100% :: Processing package changes... (1/1) removing trimage [#####################################################################] 100% (1/1) installing trimage-git [#####################################################################] 100% :: Running post-transaction hooks... (1/3) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate... (2/3) Updating icon theme caches... (3/3) Updating the desktop file MIME type cache...

After it installed, I tried to run trimage again, and it worked!

Curious if that was actually the fix, I went ahead and installed trimage (replacing trimage-git) and tried to run it again.

It still worked!

My conclusion at this point is that something got screwy with the package during some update I had run previously. Reinstalling the package seemed to flush out the gremlins and get my moving again.