A comparison of outputs reveals differences:
user@user-VirtualBox:~$ pip list
feedparser (5.1.3)
pip (1.4.1)
setuptools (1.1.5)
wsgiref (0.1.2)
user@user-VirtualBox:~$ pip freeze
feedparser==5.1.3
wsgiref==0.1.2
Pip's documentation states
freeze Output installed packages in requirements format.
list List installed packages.
but what is "requirements format," and why does pip list
generate a more comprehensive list than pip freeze
?
This question is related to
python
python-2.7
python-3.x
pip
pip list
List installed packages: show ALL installed packages that even pip installed implictly
pip freeze
List installed packages: - list of packages that are installed using pip command
pip freeze has --all
flag to show all the packages.
Other difference is the output it renders, that you can check by running the commands.
The main difference is that the output of pip freeze
can be dumped into a requirements.txt file and used later to re-construct the "frozen" environment.
In other words you can run:
pip freeze > frozen-requirements.txt
on one machine and then later on a different machine or on a clean environment you can do:
pip install -r frozen-requirements.txt
and you'll get the an identical environment with the exact same dependencies installed as you had in the original environment where you generated the frozen-requirements.txt.
pip list
shows ALL installed packages.
pip freeze
shows packages YOU installed via pip
(or pipenv
if using that tool) command in a requirements format.
Remark below that setuptools, pip, wheel are installed when pipenv shell
creates my virtual envelope. These packages were NOT installed by me using pip
:
test1 % pipenv shell
Creating a virtualenv for this project…
Pipfile: /Users/terrence/Development/Python/Projects/test1/Pipfile
Using /usr/local/Cellar/pipenv/2018.11.26_3/libexec/bin/python3.8 (3.8.1) to create virtualenv…
? Creating virtual environment...
<SNIP>
Installing setuptools, pip, wheel...
done.
? Successfully created virtual environment!
<SNIP>
Now review & compare the output of the respective commands where I've only installed cool-lib and sampleproject (of which peppercorn is a dependency):
test1 % pip freeze <== Packages I'VE installed w/ pip
-e git+https://github.com/gdamjan/hello-world-python-package.git@10<snip>71#egg=cool_lib
peppercorn==0.6
sampleproject==1.3.1
test1 % pip list <== All packages, incl. ones I've NOT installed w/ pip
Package Version Location
------------- ------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
cool-lib 0.1 /Users/terrence/.local/share/virtualenvs/test1-y2Zgz1D2/src/cool-lib <== Installed w/ `pip` command
peppercorn 0.6 <== Dependency of "sampleproject"
pip 20.0.2
sampleproject 1.3.1 <== Installed w/ `pip` command
setuptools 45.1.0
wheel 0.34.2
For those looking for a solution. If you accidentally made pip
requirements with pip list
instead of pip freeze
, and want to convert into pip freeze format. I wrote this R script to do so.
library(tidyverse)
pip_list = read_lines("requirements.txt")
pip_freeze = pip_list %>%
str_replace_all(" \\(", "==") %>%
str_replace_all("\\)$", "")
pip_freeze %>% write_lines("requirements.txt")
Look at the pip documentation, which describes the functionality of both as:
pip list
List installed packages, including editables.
pip freeze
Output installed packages in requirements format.
So there are two differences:
Output format, freeze
gives us the standard requirement format that may be used later with pip install -r
to install requirements from.
Output content, pip list
include editables which pip freeze
does not.
To answer the second part of this question, the two packages shown in pip list
but not pip freeze
are setuptools
(which is easy_install) and pip
itself.
It looks like pip freeze
just doesn't list packages that pip itself depends on. You may use the --all
flag to show also those packages.
From the documentation:
--all
Do not skip these packages in the output: pip, setuptools, distribute, wheel
Source: Stackoverflow.com