Installation on CentOS v7.5/Python v2.7.5 - can't uninstall configobj

[GrayCatCode]

While attempting to do a clean installation on CentOS Linux release 7.5.1804 (Python version 2.7.5) I ran into an issue with the configobj package. The series of installation steps were as follows:

sudo yum install python-pip
pip install -U pip
pip install saws

I got the following error in the last step:

Found existing installation: configobj 4.7.2
Cannot uninstall 'configobj'. It is a distutils installed project and thus we cannot accurately determine which files belong to it which would lead to only a partial uninstall.

[GTxx]

I have the same problem and solved with

pip install saws --ignore-installed

with --ignore-installed may mess up centos system dependency, but can work.
you can also see the discussion here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49932759/pip-10-and-apt-how-to-avoid-cannot-uninstall-x-errors-for-distutils-packages
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53807511/pip-cannot-uninstall-package-it-is-a-distutils-installed-project/53807588#53807588