[python] pip installs packages successfully, but executables not found from command line

I am working on mac OS X Yosemite, version 10.10.3.

I installed python2.7 and pip using macport as done in http://johnlaudun.org/20150512-installing-and-setting-pip-with-macports/

I can successfully install packages and import them inside my python environment and python scripts. However any executable associated with a package that can be called from the command line in the terminal are not found.

Does anyone know what might be wrong? (More details below)

For example while installing a package called "rosdep" as instructed in http://wiki.ros.org/jade/Installation/Source

I can run: sudo pip install -U rosdep which installs without errors and corresponding files are located in /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages

However if I try to run : sudo rosdep init, it gives an error : "sudo: rosdep: command not found"

This is not a package specific error. I get this for any package installed using pip on my computer. I even tried adding

/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages

to my $PATH. But the executables are not found on the command line, even though the packages work perfectly from within python.

I stumbled upon this question because I created, successfully built and published a PyPI Package, but couldn't execute it after installation. The $PATHvariable was correctly set.

In my case the problem was that I hadn't set the entry_pointin the setup.py file:

entry_points = {'console_scripts':

['YOUR_CONSOLE_COMMAND=MODULE_NAME.FILE_NAME:FUNCTION_NAME'],},

I know the question asks about macOS, but here is a solution for Linux users who arrive here via Google.

I was having the issue described in this question, having installed the pdfx package via pip.

When I ran it however, nothing...

pip list | grep pdfx
pdfx (1.3.0)

Yet:

which pdfx
pdfx not found

The problem on Linux is that pip install ... drops scripts into ~/.local/bin and this is not on the default Debian/Ubuntu $PATH.

Here's a GitHub issue going into more detail: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/3813

To fix, just add ~/.local/bin to your $PATH, for example by adding the following line to your .bashrc file:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

After that, restart your shell and things should work as expected.

When you install Python or Python3 using MacOS installer (downloaded from Python website) - it adds an exporter to your ~/.profile script. All you need to do is just source it. Restarting all the terminals should also do the trick.

WARNING - I believe it's better to just use pip3 with Python3 - for future benefits.

If you already have Python3 installed, the following steps work for me on macOS Mojave:

1. Install ansible first using sudo - sudo -H pip3 install ansible

2. you create a symlink to the Python's bin path

sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/current_python_bin

and staple it to .profile

export PATH=$PATH:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/current_python_bin

3. run source ~/.profile and restart all terminal shells.

4. Type ansible --version

Solution

Based on other answers, for linux and mac you can run the following:

echo "export PATH=\"`python3 -m site --user-base`/bin:$PATH\"" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

instead of python3 you can use any other link to python version: python, python2.7, python3.6, python3.9, etc.

Explanation

In order to know where the user packages are installed in the current OS (win, mac, linux), we run:

python3 -m site --user-base

We know that the scripts go to the bin/ folder where the packages are installed.

So we concatenate the paths:

echo `python3 -m site --user-base`/bin

Then we export that to an environment variable.

export PATH=\"`python3 -m site --user-base`/bin:$PATH\"

Finally, in order to avoid repeating the export command we add it to our .bashrc file and we run source to run the new changes, giving us the suggested solution mentioned at the beginning.

If you're installing using --user (e.g. pip3.6 install --user tmuxp), it is possible to get the platform-specific user install directory from Python itself using the site module. For example, on macOS:

$ python2.7 -m site --user-base
/Users/alexp/Library/Python/2.7

By appending /bin to this, we now have the path where package executables will be installed. We can dynamically populate the PATH in your shell's rc file based on the output; I'm using bash, but with any luck this is portable:

# Add Python bin directories to path
python3.6 -m site &> /dev/null && PATH="$PATH:`python3.6 -m site --user-base`/bin"
python2.7 -m site &> /dev/null && PATH="$PATH:`python2.7 -m site --user-base`/bin"

I use the precise Python versions to reduce the chance of the executables just "disappearing" when Python upgrades a minor version, e.g. from 3.5 to 3.6. They'll disappear because, as can be seen above, the user installation path may include the Python version. So while python3 could point to 3.5 or 3.6, python3.6 will always point to 3.6. This needs to be kept in mind when installing further packages, e.g. use pip3.6 over pip3.

If you don't mind the idea of packages disappearing, you can use python2 and python3 instead:

# Add Python bin directories to path
# Note: When Python is upgraded, packages may need to be re-installed
#       or Python versions managed.
python3 -m site &> /dev/null && PATH="$PATH:`python3 -m site --user-base`/bin"
python2 -m site &> /dev/null && PATH="$PATH:`python2 -m site --user-base`/bin"

On Windows, you need to add the path %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Python\Scripts to your path.

In addition to adding python's bin directory to $PATH variable, I also had to change the owner of that directory, to make it work. No idea why I wasn't the owner already.

chown -R ~/Library/Python/

On macOS with the default python installation you need to add /Users/<you>/Library/Python/2.7/bin/ to your $PATH.

Add this to your .bash_profile:

export PATH="/Users/<you>/Library/Python/2.7/bin:$PATH"

That's where pip installs the executables.

Tip: For non-default python version which python to find the location of your python installation and replace that portion in the path above. (Thanks for the hint Sanket_Diwale)

On Windows , this helped me https://packaging.python.org/tutorials/installing-packages

On Windows you can find the user base binary directory by running python -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.