Pipenv: Command Not Found

Question

I'm new to Python development and attempting to use pipenv. I ran the command pip install pipenv, which ran successfully:

...
Successfully built pipenv pathlib shutilwhich pythonz-bd virtualenv-clone
Installing collected packages: virtualenv, pathlib, shutilwhich, backports.shutil-get-terminal-size, pythonz-bd, virtualenv-clone, pew, first, six, click, pip-tools, certifi, chardet, idna, urllib3, requests, pipenv
...

However, when I run the command pipenv install in a fresh root project directory I receive the following message: -bash: pipenv: command not found. I suspect that I might need to modify my .bashrc, but I'm unclear about what to add to the file or if modification is even necessary.

Answer 1

Where Python store packages

Before jumping into the command that will install pipenv, it is worth understanding where pip installs Python packages.

Global site-packages is where Python installs packages that will be available to all users and all Python applications on the system. You can check the global site package with the command

python -m site

For example, on Linux with Python 3.7 the path is usually

/usr/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/setuptools

User site-packages is where Python installs packages available only for you. But the packages will still be visible to all Python projects that you create. You can get the path with

python -m site --user-base

On Linux with Python 3.7 the path is usually

~/.local/lib/python3.7/site-packages

Using Python 3.x

On most Linux and other Unices, usually Python 2 and Python 3 is installed side-by-side. The default Python 3 executable is almost always python3. pip may be available as either of the following, depending on your Linux distribution

pip3
python3-pip
python36-pip
python3.6-pip

Linux

Avoid using pip with sudo! Yes, it's the most convenient way to install Python packages and the executable is available at /usr/local/bin/pipenv, but it also mean that specific package is always visible for all users, and all Python projects that you create. Instead, use per-user site packages instead with --user

pip3 install --user pipenv

pipenv is available at

~/.local/bin/pipenv

macOS

On macOS, Homebrew is the recommended way to install Python. You can easily upgrade Python, install multiple versions of Python and switch between versions using Homebrew.

If you are using Homebrew'ed Python, pip install --user is disabled. The global site-package is located at

/usr/local/lib/python3.y/site-packages

and you can safely install Python packages here. Python 3.y also searches for modules in:

 /Library/Python/3.y/site-packages
 ~/Library/Python/3.y/lib/python/site-packages

Windows

For legacy reasons, Python is installed in C:\Python37. The Python executable is usually named py.exe, and you can run pip with py -m pip.

Global site packages is installed in

C:\Python37\lib\site-packages

Since you don't usually share your Windows devices, it is also OK to install a package globally

py -m pip install pipenv

pipenv is now available at

C:\Python37\Scripts\pipenv.exe

I don't recommend install Python packages in Windows with --user, because the default user site-package directory is in your Windows roaming profile

C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages 

The roaming profile is used in Terminal Services (Remote Desktop, Citrix, etc) and when you log on / off in a corporate environment. Slow login, logoff and reboot in Windows can be caused by a large roaming profile.

Answer 2

This fixed it for me:

sudo -H pip install -U pipenv