Yes, but you can clear it out of sys.modules before executing runpy to get the desired effect of falling through to the regular package (runpy wouldn't import pip.__main__ so you literally just need ``del sys.modules['pip']``). You could also pull the old pkgutil.extend_path() trick and use the append method on the _NamespacePath object to directly add the new directory that pip was installed to and then import pip.runner.main(), but that feels like more of a hack to me (but then again I'm rather comfortable mucking with the import system =).