pip (package manager)

pip

300px An output of pip --help
Initial release	April 4, 2011 (2011-04-04)
Stable release	8.1.1 / March 17, 2016 (2016-03-17)
Written in	Python
Operating system	OS-independent
Platform	Python
Type	Package management system
License	Free software
Website	{{#property:P856}}

pip is a package management system used to install and manage software packages written in Python. Many packages can be found in the Python Package Index (PyPI).

Python 2.7.9 and later (on the python2 series), and Python 3.4 and later include pip (pip3 for Python 3) by default.

pip is a recursive acronym that can stand for either "Pip Installs Packages" or "Pip Installs Python".

Command-line interface

File:Pip install virtualenv.png

An output of pip install virtualenv

Most distributions of Python come with pip preinstalled. If pip is missing, it can be installed through the system package manager or by invoking

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python

One major advantage of pip is the ease of its command-line interface, which makes installing Python software packages as easy as issuing one command:

pip install some-package-name

Users can also easily remove the package:

pip uninstall some-package-name

Most importantly pip has a feature to manage full lists of packages and corresponding version numbers, possible through a "requirements" file. This permits the efficient re-creation of an entire group of packages in a separate environment (e.g. another computer) or virtual environment. This can be achieved with a properly formatted requirements.txt file and the following command:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Install some package for a specific version python, where ${version} is replaced for 2, 3, 3.4, etc:

pip${version} install some-package-name

Web hosting service use

Pip is used to support the use of Python in cloud web hosting, such as by Heroku.

See also

• Setuptools
• Software repository