You can install, upgrade, and remove packages using a program called pip. By default pip will install packages from the Python Package Index, <https://pypi.python.org/pypi>. You can browse the Python Package Index by going to it in your web browser, or you can use pip’s limited search feature:
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(tutorial-env) $ pip search astronomy
skyfield - Elegant astronomy for Python
gary - Galactic astronomy and gravitational dynamics.
novas - The United States Naval Observatory NOVAS astronomy library
astroobs - Provides astronomy ephemeris to plan telescope observations
PyAstronomy - A collection of astronomy related tools for Python.
...
pip has a number of subcommands: “search”, “install”, “uninstall”, “freeze”, etc. (Consult the Installing Python Modules guide for complete documentation for pip.)
You can install the latest version of a package by specifying a package’s name:
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(tutorial-env) $ pip install novas
Collecting novas
Downloading novas-3.1.1.3.tar.gz (136kB)
Installing collected packages: novas
Running setup.py install for novas
Successfully installed novas-3.1.1.3
You can also install a specific version of a package by giving the package name followed by == and the version number:
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(tutorial-env) $ pip install requests==2.6.0
Collecting requests==2.6.0
Using cached requests-2.6.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: requests
Successfully installed requests-2.6.0
If you re-run this command, pip will notice that the requested version is already installed and do nothing. You can supply a different version number to get that version, or you can run pip install --upgrade to upgrade the package to the latest version:
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(tutorial-env) $ pip install --upgrade requests
Collecting requests
Installing collected packages: requests
Found existing installation: requests 2.6.0
Uninstalling requests-2.6.0:
Successfully uninstalled requests-2.6.0
Successfully installed requests-2.7.0
pip uninstall followed by one or more package names will remove the packages from the virtual environment.
pip show will display information about a particular package:
pip list will display all of the packages installed in the virtual environment:
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(tutorial-env) $ pip list
novas (3.1.1.3)
numpy (1.9.2)
pip (7.0.3)
requests (2.7.0)
setuptools (16.0)
pip freeze will produce a similar list of the installed packages, but the output uses the format that pip install expects. A common convention is to put this list in a requirements.txt file:
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(tutorial-env) $ pip freeze > requirements.txt
(tutorial-env) $ cat requirements.txt
novas==3.1.1.3
numpy==1.9.2
requests==2.7.0
The requirements.txt can then be committed to version control and shipped as part of an application. Users can then install all the necessary packages with install -r:
pip has many more options. Consult the Installing Python Modules guide for complete documentation for pip. When you’ve written a package and want to make it available on the Python Package Index, consult the Distributing Python Modules guide.