Installing Packages

This section covers the basics of how to install Python packages.

It’s important to note that the term “package” in this context is being used to
describe a bundle of software to be installed (i.e. as a synonym for
a distribution). It does not refer to the kind of package that you import in your
Python source code (i.e. a container of modules). It is common in the Python
community to refer to a distribution using the term “package”. Using the term
“distribution” is often not preferred, because it can easily be confused with a
Linux distribution, or another larger software distribution like Python itself.

Requirements for Installing Packages

This section describes the steps to follow before installing other Python
packages.

Ensure you can run Python from the command line

Before you go any further, make sure you have Python and that the expected
version is available from your command line. You can check this by running:

Unix/macOSWindows
py --version

You should get some output like Python 3.6.3. If you do not have Python, please
install the latest 3.x version from python.org or refer to the Installing
Python section of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python.

Note

If you’re a newcomer and you get an error like this:

>>> python3 --version
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'python3' is not defined

It’s because this command and other suggested commands in this tutorial are
intended to be run in a shell (also called a terminal or console). See the Python
for Beginners getting started tutorial for an introduction to using your
operating system’s shell and interacting with Python.

Note

If you’re using an enhanced shell like IPython or the Jupyter notebook, you
can run system commands like those in this tutorial by prefacing them with
a ! character:
In [1]: import sys
!{sys.executable} --version
Python 3.6.3

It’s recommended to write {sys.executable} rather than plain python in order to

ensure that commands are run in the Python installation matching the
currently running notebook (which may not be the same Python installation
that the python command refers to).

Note

Due to the way most Linux distributions are handling the Python 3 migration,
Linux users using the system Python without creating a virtual environment
first should replace the python command in this tutorial with python3 and
the python -m pip command with python3 -m pip --user. Do not run any of the commands
in this tutorial with sudo: if you get a permissions error, come back to the
section on creating virtual environments, set one up, and then continue with
the tutorial as written.

Ensure you can run pip from the command line

Additionally, you’ll need to make sure you have pip available. You can check
this by running:

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip --version
If you installed Python from source, with an installer from python.org, or
via Homebrew you should already have pip. If you’re on Linux and installed
using your OS package manager, you may have to install pip separately,
see Installing pip/setuptools/wheel with Linux Package Managers.

If pip isn’t already installed, then first try to bootstrap it from the standard
library:

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m ensurepip --default-pip

If that still doesn’t allow you to run python -m pip:

 Securely Download get-pip.py [1]

 Run python get-pip.py. [2] This will install or upgrade pip. Additionally, it will
install Setuptools and wheel if they’re not installed already.

Warning

Be cautious if you’re using a Python install that’s managed by your

operating system or another package manager. get-pip.py does not
coordinate with those tools, and may leave your system in an
inconsistent state. You can use python get-pip.py --prefix=/usr/local/ to install
in /usr/local which is designed for locally-installed software.

Ensure pip, setuptools, and wheel are up to date

While pip alone is sufficient to install from pre-built binary archives, up to date
copies of the setuptools and wheel projects are useful to ensure you can also install
from source archives:

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
Optionally, create a virtual environment
See section below for details, but here’s the basic venv [3] command to use on
a typical Linux system:

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m venv tutorial_env
tutorial_env\Scripts\activate

This will create a new virtual environment in the tutorial_env subdirectory, and
configure the current shell to use it as the default python environment.

Creating Virtual Environments

Python “Virtual Environments” allow Python packages to be installed in an
isolated location for a particular application, rather than being installed
globally. If you are looking to safely install global command line tools,
see Installing stand alone command line tools.

Imagine you have an application that needs version 1 of LibFoo, but another
application requires version 2. How can you use both these applications? If
you install everything into /usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages (or whatever your
platform’s standard location is), it’s easy to end up in a situation where you
unintentionally upgrade an application that shouldn’t be upgraded.

Or more generally, what if you want to install an application and leave it be? If
an application works, any change in its libraries or the versions of those
libraries can break the application.

Also, what if you can’t install packages into the global site-packages directory?
For instance, on a shared host.

In all these cases, virtual environments can help you. They have their own
installation directories and they don’t share libraries with other virtual
environments.
Currently, there are two common tools for creating Python virtual
environments:

 venv is available by default in Python 3.3 and later, and

installs pip and Setuptools into created virtual environments in Python
3.4 and later.

 virtualenv needs to be installed separately, but supports Python 2.7+

and Python 3.3+, and pip, Setuptools and wheel are always installed into
created virtual environments by default (regardless of Python version).

The basic usage is like so:

Using venv:

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m venv <DIR>
<DIR>\Scripts\activate

Using virtualenv:

Unix/macOSWindows
virtualenv <DIR>
<DIR>\Scripts\activate

For more information, see the venv docs or the virtualenv docs.

The use of source under Unix shells ensures that the virtual environment’s
variables are set within the current shell, and not in a subprocess (which then
disappears, having no useful effect).

In both of the above cases, Windows users should not use

the source command, but should rather run the activate script directly from
the command shell like so:
<DIR>\Scripts\activate

Managing multiple virtual environments directly can become tedious, so

the dependency management tutorial introduces a higher level tool, Pipenv,
that automatically manages a separate virtual environment for each project
and application that you work on.

Use pip for Installing

pip is the recommended installer. Below, we’ll cover the most common usage
scenarios. For more detail, see the pip docs, which includes a
complete Reference Guide.

Installing from PyPI

The most common usage of pip is to install from the Python Package
Index using a requirement specifier. Generally speaking, a requirement
specifier is composed of a project name followed by an optional version
specifier. A full description of the supported specifiers can be found in
the Version specifier specification. Below are some examples.

To install the latest version of “SomeProject”:

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install "SomeProject"

To install a specific version:

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install "SomeProject==1.4"

To install greater than or equal to one version and less than another:

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install "SomeProject>=1,<2"

To install a version that’s compatible with a certain version: [4]

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install "SomeProject~=1.4.2"
In this case, this means to install any version “==1.4.*” version that’s also
“>=1.4.2”.

Source Distributions vs Wheels

pip can install from either Source Distributions (sdist) or Wheels, but if both
are present on PyPI, pip will prefer a compatible wheel. You can override pip`s
default behavior by e.g. using its –no-binary option.

Wheels are a pre-built distribution format that provides faster installation

compared to Source Distributions (sdist), especially when a project contains
compiled extensions.

If pip does not find a wheel to install, it will locally build a wheel and cache it
for future installs, instead of rebuilding the source distribution in the future.

Upgrading packages
Upgrade an already installed SomeProject to the latest from PyPI.

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install --upgrade SomeProject

Installing to the User Site

To install packages that are isolated to the current user, use the --user flag:

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install --user SomeProject

For more information see the User Installs section from the pip docs.

Note that the --user flag has no effect when inside a virtual environment - all
installation commands will affect the virtual environment.
If SomeProject defines any command-line scripts or console entry points, --user will
cause them to be installed inside the user base’s binary directory, which may
or may not already be present in your shell’s PATH. (Starting in version 10, pip
displays a warning when installing any scripts to a directory outside PATH.) If
the scripts are not available in your shell after installation, you’ll need to add
the directory to your PATH:

 On Linux and macOS you can find the user base binary directory by
running python -m site --user-base and adding bin to the end. For example, this
will typically print ~/.local (with ~ expanded to the absolute path to your
home directory) so you’ll need to add ~/.local/bin to your PATH. You can set
your PATH permanently by modifying ~/.profile.

 On Windows you can find the user base binary directory by running py -
m site --user-site and replacing site-packages with Scripts. For example, this could
return C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Python36\site-packages so you would need to
set your PATH to include C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Python36\Scripts. You can
set your user PATH permanently in the Control Panel. You may need to
log out for the PATH changes to take effect.

Requirements files
Install a list of requirements specified in a Requirements File.

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Installing from VCS

Install a project from VCS in “editable” mode. For a full breakdown of the
syntax, see pip’s section on VCS Support.

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install -e SomeProject @ git+https://git.repo/some_pkg.git # from git
py -m pip install -e SomeProject @ hg+https://hg.repo/some_pkg # from mercurial
py -m pip install -e SomeProject @ svn+svn://svn.repo/some_pkg/trunk/ # from svn
py -m pip install -e SomeProject @ git+https://git.repo/some_pkg.git@feature # from a branch
Installing from other Indexes
Install from an alternate index

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install --index-url http://my.package.repo/simple/ SomeProject

Search an additional index during install, in addition to PyPI

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install --extra-index-url http://my.package.repo/simple SomeProject

Installing from a local src tree

Installing from local src in Development Mode, i.e. in such a way that the
project appears to be installed, but yet is still editable from the src tree.

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install -e <path>

You can also install normally from src

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install <path>

Installing from local archives

Install a particular source archive file.

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install ./downloads/SomeProject-1.0.4.tar.gz

Install from a local directory containing archives (and don’t check PyPI)

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install --no-index --find-links=file:///local/dir/ SomeProject
py -m pip install --no-index --find-links=/local/dir/ SomeProject
py -m pip install --no-index --find-links=relative/dir/ SomeProject

Installing from other sources

To install from other data sources (for example Amazon S3 storage) you can
create a helper application that presents the data in a format compliant with
the simple repository API:, and use the --extra-index-url flag to direct pip to use
that index.
./s3helper --port=7777
python -m pip install --extra-index-url http://localhost:7777 SomeProject

Installing Prereleases
Find pre-release and development versions, in addition to stable versions. By
default, pip only finds stable versions.

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install --pre SomeProject

Installing “Extras”
Extras are optional “variants” of a package, which may include additional
dependencies, and thereby enable additional functionality from the package. If
you wish to install an extra for a package which you know publishes one, you
can include it in the pip installation command:

Unix/macOSWindows
py -m pip install "SomePackage[PDF]"
py -m pip install "SomePackage[PDF]==3.0"
py -m pip install -e ".[PDF]" # editable project in current directory

[1]

“Secure” in this context means using a modern browser or a tool like curl that
verifies SSL certificates when downloading from https URLs.
[2]

Depending on your platform, this may require root or Administrator

access. pip is currently considering changing this by making user installs the
default behavior.

[3]

Beginning with Python 3.4, venv (a stdlib alternative to virtualenv) will create
virtualenv environments with pip pre-installed, thereby making it an equal
alternative to virtualenv.

[4]

The compatible release specifier was accepted in PEP 440 and support was
released in Setuptools v8.0 and pip v6.0

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Managing Application Dependencies

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Tutorials

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