Using Python's pip to Manage Your Projects' Dependencies
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The standard package manager for Python is pip
. It allows you to install and manage packages that aren’t part of the Python standard library. If you’re looking for an introduction to pip
, then you’ve come to the right place!
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:
- Set up
pip
in your working environment - Fix common errors related to working with
pip
- Install and uninstall packages with
pip
- Manage projects’ dependencies using requirements files
You can do a lot with pip
, but the Python community is very active and has created some neat alternatives to pip
. You’ll learn about those later in this tutorial.
Get Your Cheat Sheet: Click here to download a free pip cheat sheet that summarizes the most important pip commands.
Getting Started With pip
So, what exactly does pip
do? pip
is a package manager for Python. That means it’s a tool that allows you to install and manage libraries and dependencies that aren’t distributed as part of the standard library. The name pip was introduced by Ian Bicking in 2008:
I’ve finished renaming pyinstall to its new name: pip. The name pip is [an] acronym and declaration: pip installs packages. (Source)
Package management is so important that Python’s installers have included pip
since versions 3.4 and 2.7.9, for Python 3 and Python 2, respectively. Many Python projects use pip
, which makes it an essential tool for every Pythonista.
The concept of a package manager might be familiar to you if you’re coming from another programming language. JavaScript uses npm for package management, Ruby uses gem, and the .NET platform uses NuGet. In Python, pip
has become the standard package manager.
Finding pip
on Your System
The Python installer gives you the option to install pip
when installing Python on your system. In fact, the option to install pip
with Python is checked by default, so pip
should be ready for you to use after installing Python.
Note: On some Linux (Unix) systems like Ubuntu, pip
comes in a separate package called python3-pip
, which you need to install with sudo apt install python3-pip
. It’s not installed by default with the interpreter.
You can verify that pip
is available by looking for the pip3
executable on your system. Select your operating system below and use your platform-specific command accordingly:
On Windows and Unix systems, pip3
may be found in more than one location. This can happen when you have multiple Python versions installed. If you can’t find pip
in any location on your system, then you may consider reinstalling pip.
Instead of running your system pip
directly, you can also run it as a Python module. In the next section, you’ll learn how.
Running pip
as a Module
When you run your system pip
directly, the command itself doesn’t reveal which Python version pip
belongs to. This unfortunately means that you could use pip
to install a package into the site-packages of an old Python version without noticing. To prevent this from happening, you should run pip
as a Python module:
$ python -m pip
Notice that you use python -m
to run pip
. The -m
switch tells Python to run a module as an executable of the python
interpreter. This way, you can ensure that your system default Python version runs the pip
command. If you want to learn more about this way of running pip
, then you can read Brett Cannon’s insightful article about the advantages of using python -m pip
.
Note: Depending on how you installed Python, your Python executable may have a different name than python
. You’ll see python
used in this tutorial, but you may have to adapt the commands to use something like py
or python3
instead.
Sometimes you may want to be more explicit and limit packages to a specific project. In situations like this, you should run pip
inside a virtual environment.
Using pip
in a Python Virtual Environment
Read the full article at https://realpython.com/what-is-pip/ »
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September 16, 2024 at 07:30PM
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