diff --git a/bin/spack b/bin/spack
index 9b1276a866..e9307d1485 100755
--- a/bin/spack
+++ b/bin/spack
@@ -77,7 +77,7 @@ import llnl.util.tty as tty
 from llnl.util.tty.color import *
 import spack
 from spack.error import SpackError
-from external import argparse
+import argparse
 
 # Command parsing
 parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(