Skip to content

Added instructions to set up pip for caching packages #387

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
merged 2 commits into from
Mar 21, 2014
Merged

Added instructions to set up pip for caching packages #387

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
97701f1
Added instructions to set up pip for caching packages
Mar 20, 2014
78d5318
Removed the word 'naturally'
Mar 21, 2014
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
44 changes: 44 additions & 0 deletions docs/starting/pip-virtualenv.rst
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -82,3 +82,47 @@ After saving the changes and sourcing your ``~/.bashrc`` file you can now instal
packages globally by running ``gpip install``. You can change the name of the
function to anything you like, just keep in mind that you will have to use that
name when trying to install packages globally with pip.

Caching packages for future use
-------------------------------

Every developer has preferred libraries and when you are working on a lot of
different projects, you are bound to have some overlap between the libraries that
you use. For example, you may be using the ``requests`` library in a lot of different
projects.

It is surely unnecessary to re-download the same packages/libraries each time you
start working on a new project (and in a new virtual environmen as a result).
Fortunately, you can configure pip in such a way that it tries to reuse already
installed packages.

On UNIX systems, you can add the following line to your ``.bashrc`` or ``.bash_profile``
file.

.. code-block:: console

export PIP_DOWNLOAD_CACHE=$HOME/.pip/cache

You can set the path to anywhere you like (as long as you have write
access). After adding this line, ``source`` your ``.bashrc`` (or ``.bash_profile``)
file and you will be all set.

Another way of doing the same configuration is via the ``pip.conf`` or ``pip.ini``
files, depending on your system. If you are on Windows, you can add the following
line to your ``pip.ini`` file under ``[global]`` settings:

.. code-block:: console

download-cache = %HOME%\pip\cache

Similarly, on UNIX systems you should simply add the following line to your
``pip.conf`` file under ``[global]`` settings:

.. code-block:: console

download-cache = $HOME/.pip/cache

Even though you can use any path you like to store your cache, it is recommended
that you create a new folder *in* the folder where your ``pip.conf`` or ``pip.ini``
file lives. If you don't trust yourself with all of this path voodoo, just use
the values provided here and you will be fine.