[python] Installing Python packages from local file system folder to virtualenv with pip

Is it possible to install packages using pip from the local filesystem?

I have run python setup.py sdist for my package, which has created the appropriate tar.gz file. This file is stored on my system at /srv/pkg/mypackage/mypackage-0.1.0.tar.gz.

Now in a virtual environment I would like to install packages either coming from pypi or from the specific local location /srv/pkg.

Is this possible?

PS I know that I can specify pip install /srv/pkg/mypackage/mypackage-0.1.0.tar.gz. That will work, but I am talking about using the /srv/pkg location as another place for pip to search if I typed pip install mypackage.

Having requirements in requirements.txt and egg_dir as a directory

you can build your local cache:

$ pip download -r requirements.txt -d eggs_dir

then, using that "cache" is simple like:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt --find-links=eggs_dir

What about::

pip install --help
...
  -e, --editable <path/url>   Install a project in editable mode (i.e. setuptools
                              "develop mode") from a local project path or a VCS url.

eg, pip install -e /srv/pkg

where /srv/pkg is the top-level directory where 'setup.py' can be found.

I've been trying to achieve something really simple and failed miserably, probably I'm stupid.

Anyway, if you have a script/Dockerfile which download a python package zip file (e.g. from GitHub) and you then want to install it you can use the file:/// prefix to install it as shown in the following example:

$ wget https://example.com/mypackage.zip
$ echo "${MYPACKAGE_MD5}  mypackage.zip" | md5sum --check -
$ pip install file:///.mypackage.zip

NOTE: I know you could install the package straight away using pip install https://example.com/mypackage.zip but in my case I wanted to verify the checksum (never paranoid enough) and I failed miserably when trying to use the various options that pip provides/the #md5 fragment.

It's been surprisingly frustrating to do something so simple directly with pip. I just wanted to pass a checksum and have pip verify that the zip was matching before installing it.

I was probably doing something very stupid but in the end I gave up and opted for this. I hope it helps others trying to do something similar.

I am installing pyfuzzybut is is not in PyPI; it returns the message: No matching distribution found for pyfuzzy.

I tried the accepted answer

pip install  --no-index --find-links=file:///Users/victor/Downloads/pyfuzzy-0.1.0 pyfuzzy

But it does not work either and returns the following error:

Ignoring indexes: https://pypi.python.org/simple Collecting pyfuzzy Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pyfuzzy (from versions: ) No matching distribution found for pyfuzzy

At last , I have found a simple good way there: https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/reference/pip_install.html

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

So the following command worked for me:

pip install ../pyfuzzy-0.1.0.tar.gz.

Hope it can help you.

Assuming you have virtualenv and a requirements.txt file, then you can define inside this file where to get the packages:

# Published pypi packages 
PyJWT==1.6.4
email_validator==1.0.3
# Remote GIT repo package, this will install as django-bootstrap-themes
git+https://github.com/marquicus/django-bootstrap-themes#egg=django-bootstrap-themes
# Local GIT repo package, this will install as django-knowledge
git+file:///soft/SANDBOX/python/django/forks/django-knowledge#egg=django-knowledge

An option --find-links does the job and it works from requirements.txt file!

You can put package archives in some folder and take the latest one without changing the requirements file, for example requirements:

.
+---requirements.txt
+---requirements
    +---foo_bar-0.1.5-py2.py3-none-any.whl
    +---foo_bar-0.1.6-py2.py3-none-any.whl
    +---wiz_bang-0.7-py2.py3-none-any.whl
    +---wiz_bang-0.8-py2.py3-none-any.whl
    +---base.txt
    +---local.txt
    +---production.txt

Now in requirements/base.txt put:

--find-links=requirements
foo_bar
wiz_bang>=0.8

A neat way to update proprietary packages, just drop new one in the folder

In this way you can install packages from local folder AND pypi with the same single call: pip install -r requirements/production.txt

PS. See my cookiecutter-djangopackage fork to see how to split requirements and use folder based requirements organization.

From the installing-packages page you can simply run:

pip install /srv/pkg/mypackage

where /srv/pkg/mypackage is the directory, containing setup.py.

Additionally¹, you can install it from the archive file:

pip install ./mypackage-1.0.4.tar.gz

¹ Although noted in the question, due to its popularity, it is also included.

To install only from local you need 2 options:

• --find-links: where to look for dependencies. There is no need for the file:// prefix mentioned by others.
• --no-index: do not look in pypi indexes for missing dependencies (dependencies not installed and not in the --find-links path).

So you could run from any folder the following:

pip install --no-index --find-links /srv/pkg /path/to/mypackage-0.1.0.tar.gz

If your mypackage is setup properly, it will list all its dependencies, and if you used pip download to download the cascade of dependencies (ie dependencies of depencies etc), everything will work.

If you want to use the pypi index if it is accessible, but fallback to local wheels if not, you can remove --no-index and add --retries 0. You will see pip pause for a bit while it is try to check pypi for a missing dependency (one not installed) and when it finds it cannot reach it, will fall back to local. There does not seem to be a way to tell pip to "look for local ones first, then the index".

This is the solution that I ended up using:

import pip


def install(package):
    # Debugging
    # pip.main(["install", "--pre", "--upgrade", "--no-index",
    #         "--find-links=.", package, "--log-file", "log.txt", "-vv"])
    pip.main(["install", "--upgrade", "--no-index", "--find-links=.", package])


if __name__ == "__main__":
    install("mypackagename")
    raw_input("Press Enter to Exit...\n")

I pieced this together from pip install examples as well as from Rikard's answer on another question. The "--pre" argument lets you install non-production versions. The "--no-index" argument avoids searching the PyPI indexes. The "--find-links=." argument searches in the local folder (this can be relative or absolute). I used the "--log-file", "log.txt", and "-vv" arguments for debugging. The "--upgrade" argument lets you install newer versions over older ones.

I also found a good way to uninstall them. This is useful when you have several different Python environments. It's the same basic format, just using "uninstall" instead of "install", with a safety measure to prevent unintended uninstalls:

import pip


def uninstall(package):
    response = raw_input("Uninstall '%s'? [y/n]:\n" % package)
    if "y" in response.lower():
        # Debugging
        # pip.main(["uninstall", package, "-vv"])
        pip.main(["uninstall", package])
    pass


if __name__ == "__main__":
    uninstall("mypackagename")
    raw_input("Press Enter to Exit...\n")

The local folder contains these files: install.py, uninstall.py, mypackagename-1.0.zip