Question

Usage

pip install [options] <requirement specifier> ...
pip install [options] -r <requirements file> ...
pip install [options] [-e] <vcs project url> ...
pip install [options] [-e] <local project path> ...
pip install [options] <archive url/path> ...

Description

Install packages from:

• PyPI (and other indexes) using requirement specifiers.
• VCS project urls.
• Local project directories.
• Local or remote source archives.

pip also supports installing from “requirements files”, which provide an easy way to specify a whole environment to be installed.

Requirements File Format

Each line of the requirements file indicates something to be installed, and like arguments to pip install, the following forms are supported:

<requirement specifier>
<archive url/path>
[-e] <local project path>
[-e] <vcs project url>

See the pip install Examples for examples of all these forms.

A line beginning with # is treated as a comment and ignored.

Additionally, the following Package Index Options are supported:

• -i, –index-url
• –extra-index-url
• –no-index
• -f, –find-links
• –allow-external
• –allow-all-external
• –allow-unverified

For example, to specify –no-index and 2 –find-links locations:

--no-index
--find-links /my/local/archives
--find-links http://some.archives.com/archives

Lastly, if you wish, you can refer to other requirements files, like this:

-r more_requirements.txt

Requirement Specifiers

pip supports installing from “requirement specifiers” as implemented in pkg_resources Requirements

Some Examples:

'FooProject >= 1.2'
Fizzy [foo, bar]
'PickyThing<1.6,>1.9,!=1.9.6,<2.0a0,==2.4c1'
SomethingWhoseVersionIDontCareAbout

Note

Use single or double quotes around specifiers to avoid > and < being interpreted as shell redirects. e.g. pip install 'FooProject>=1.2'.

Pre-release Versions

Starting with v1.4, pip will only install stable versions as specified by PEP426 by default. If a version cannot be parsed as a compliant PEP426 version then it is assumed to be a pre-release.

If a Requirement specifier includes a pre-release or development version (e.g. >=0.0.dev0) then pip will allow pre-release and development versions for that requirement. This does not include the != flag.

The pip install command also supports a –pre flag that will enable installing pre-releases and development releases.

Externally Hosted Files

Starting with v1.4, pip will warn about installing any file that does not come from the primary index. As of version 1.5, pip defaults to ignoring these files unless asked to consider them.

The pip install command supports a –allow-external PROJECT option that will enable installing links that are linked directly from the simple index but to an external host that also have a supported hash fragment. Externally hosted files for all projects may be enabled using the –allow-all-external flag to the pip install command.

The pip install command also supports a –allow-unverified PROJECT option that will enable installing insecurely linked files. These are either directly linked (as above) files without a hash, or files that are linked from either the home page or the download url of a package.

These options can be used in a requirements file. Assuming some fictional ExternalPackage that is hosted external and unverified, then your requirements file would be like so:

--allow-external ExternalPackage
--allow-unverified ExternalPackage
ExternalPackage

VCS Support

pip supports installing from Git, Mercurial, Subversion and Bazaar, and detects the type of VCS using url prefixes: “git+”, “hg+”, “bzr+”, “svn+”.

pip requires a working VCS command on your path: git, hg, svn, or bzr.

VCS projects can be installed in editable mode (using the –editable option) or not.

• For editable installs, the clone location by default is “<venv path>/src/SomeProject” in virtual environments, and “<cwd>/src/SomeProject” for global installs. The –src option can be used to modify this location.
• For non-editable installs, the project is built locally in a temp dir and then installed normally.

The url suffix “egg=<project name>” is used by pip in it’s dependency logic to identify the project prior to pip downloading and analyzing the metadata.

Git

pip currently supports cloning over git, git+https and git+ssh:

Here are the supported forms:

[-e] git+git://git.myproject.org/MyProject#egg=MyProject
[-e] git+https://git.myproject.org/MyProject#egg=MyProject
[-e] git+ssh://git.myproject.org/MyProject#egg=MyProject
-e git+git@git.myproject.org:MyProject#egg=MyProject

Passing branch names, a commit hash or a tag name is possible like so:

[-e] git://git.myproject.org/MyProject.git@master#egg=MyProject
[-e] git://git.myproject.org/MyProject.git@v1.0#egg=MyProject
[-e] git://git.myproject.org/MyProject.git@da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709#egg=MyProject

Mercurial

The supported schemes are: hg+http, hg+https, hg+static-http and hg+ssh.

Here are the supported forms:

[-e] hg+http://hg.myproject.org/MyProject#egg=MyProject
[-e] hg+https://hg.myproject.org/MyProject#egg=MyProject
[-e] hg+ssh://hg.myproject.org/MyProject#egg=MyProject

You can also specify a revision number, a revision hash, a tag name or a local branch name like so:

[-e] hg+http://hg.myproject.org/MyProject@da39a3ee5e6b#egg=MyProject
[-e] hg+http://hg.myproject.org/MyProject@2019#egg=MyProject
[-e] hg+http://hg.myproject.org/MyProject@v1.0#egg=MyProject
[-e] hg+http://hg.myproject.org/MyProject@special_feature#egg=MyProject

Subversion

pip supports the URL schemes svn, svn+svn, svn+http, svn+https, svn+ssh.

You can also give specific revisions to an SVN URL, like so:

[-e] svn+svn://svn.myproject.org/svn/MyProject#egg=MyProject
[-e] svn+http://svn.myproject.org/svn/MyProject/trunk@2019#egg=MyProject

which will check out revision 2019. @{20080101} would also check out the revision from 2008-01-01. You can only check out specific revisions using -e svn+....

Bazaar

pip supports Bazaar using the bzr+http, bzr+https, bzr+ssh, bzr+sftp, bzr+ftp and bzr+lp schemes.

Here are the supported forms:

[-e] bzr+http://bzr.myproject.org/MyProject/trunk#egg=MyProject
[-e] bzr+sftp://user@myproject.org/MyProject/trunk#egg=MyProject
[-e] bzr+ssh://user@myproject.org/MyProject/trunk#egg=MyProject
[-e] bzr+ftp://user@myproject.org/MyProject/trunk#egg=MyProject
[-e] bzr+lp:MyProject#egg=MyProject

Tags or revisions can be installed like so:

[-e] bzr+https://bzr.myproject.org/MyProject/trunk@2019#egg=MyProject
[-e] bzr+http://bzr.myproject.org/MyProject/trunk@v1.0#egg=MyProject

Finding Packages

pip searches for packages on PyPI using the http simple interface, which is documented here and there

pip offers a number of Package Index Options for modifying how packages are found.

See the pip install Examples.

SSL Certificate Verification

Starting with v1.3, pip provides SSL certificate verification over https, for the purpose of providing secure, certified downloads from PyPI.

Hash Verification

PyPI provides md5 hashes in the hash fragment of package download urls.

pip supports checking this, as well as any of the guaranteed hashlib algorithms (sha1, sha224, sha384, sha256, sha512, md5).

The hash fragment is case sensitive (i.e. sha1 not SHA1).

This check is only intended to provide basic download corruption protection. It is not intended to provide security against tampering. For that, see SSL Certificate Verification

Download Cache

pip offers a –download-cache option for installs to prevent redundant downloads of archives from PyPI.

The point of this cache is not to circumvent the index crawling process, but to just prevent redundant downloads.

Items are stored in this cache based on the url the archive was found at, not simply the archive name.

If you want a fast/local install solution that circumvents crawling PyPI, see the Fast & Local Installs.

Like all options, –download-cache, can also be set as an environment variable, or placed into the pip config file. See the Configuration section.

“Editable” Installs

“Editable” installs are fundamentally “setuptools develop mode” installs.

You can install local projects or VCS projects in “editable” mode:

$ pip install -e path/to/SomeProject
$ pip install -e git+http://repo/my_project.git#egg=SomeProject

For local projects, the “SomeProject.egg-info” directory is created relative to the project path. This is one advantage over just using setup.py develop, which creates the “egg-info” directly relative the current working directory.

Controlling setup_requires

Setuptools offers the setup_requires setup() keyword for specifying dependencies that need to be present in order for the setup.py script to run. Internally, Setuptools uses easy_install to fulfill these dependencies.

pip has no way to control how these dependencies are located. None of the Package Index Options have an effect.

The solution is to configure a “system” or “personal” Distutils configuration file to manage the fulfillment.

For example, to have the dependency located at an alternate index, add this:

[easy_install]
index_url = https://my.index-mirror.com

To have the dependency located from a local directory and not crawl PyPI, add this:

[easy_install]
allow_hosts = ''
find_links = file:///path/to/local/archives

Options

-e,--editable<path/url>

1. Install SomePackage and it’s dependencies from PyPI using Requirement Specifiers

$ pip install SomePackage            # latest version
$ pip install SomePackage==1.0.4     # specific version
$ pip install 'SomePackage>=1.0.4'     # minimum version

2. Install a list of requirements specified in a file. See the Requirements files.

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Upgrade an already installed SomePackage to the latest from PyPI.

$ pip install --upgrade SomePackage

4. Install a local project in “editable” mode. See the section on Editable Installs.

$ pip install -e .                     # project in current directory
$ pip install -e path/to/project       # project in another directory

5. Install a project from VCS in “editable” mode. See the sections on VCS Support and Editable Installs.

$ pip install -e git+https://git.repo/some_pkg.git#egg=SomePackage          # from git
$ pip install -e hg+https://hg.repo/some_pkg.git#egg=SomePackage            # from mercurial
$ pip install -e svn+svn://svn.repo/some_pkg/trunk/#egg=SomePackage         # from svn
$ pip install -e git+https://git.repo/some_pkg.git@feature#egg=SomePackage  # from 'feature' branch
$ pip install -e git+https://git.repo/some_repo.git@egg=subdir&subdirectory=subdir_path # install a python package from a repo subdirectory

6. Install a package with setuptools extras.

$ pip install SomePackage[PDF]
$ pip install SomePackage[PDF]==3.0
$ pip install -e .[PDF]==3.0  # editable project in current directory

7. Install a particular source archive file.

$ pip install ./downloads/SomePackage-1.0.4.tar.gz
$ pip install http://my.package.repo/SomePackage-1.0.4.zip

8. Install from alternative package repositories.

Install from a different index, and not PyPI

$ pip install --index-url http://my.package.repo/simple/ SomePackage

Search an additional index during install, in addition to PyPI

$ pip install --extra-index-url http://my.package.repo/simple SomePackage

Install from a local flat directory containing archives (and don’t scan indexes):

$ pip install --no-index --find-links=file:///local/dir/ SomePackage
$ pip install --no-index --find-links=/local/dir/ SomePackage
$ pip install --no-index --find-links=relative/dir/ SomePackage

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

$ pip install --pre SomePackage