Installing Python packages from local file system

Question

Is it possible to install packages using pip from the local filesystem?

I have run python setup.py sdist for my package, which has created the appropriate tar.gz file. This file is stored on my system at /srv/pkg/mypackage/mypackage-0.1.0.tar.gz.

Now in a virtual environment I would like to install packages either coming from pypi or from the specific local location /srv/pkg.

Is this possible?

PS I know that I can specify pip install /srv/pkg/mypackage/mypackage-0.1.0.tar.gz. That will work, but I am talking about using the /srv/pkg location as another place for pip to search if I typed pip install mypackage.

Answer 1

Assuming you have virtualenv and a requirements.txt file, then you can define inside this file where to get the packages:

# Published pypi packages 
PyJWT==1.6.4
email_validator==1.0.3
# Remote GIT repo package, this will install as django-bootstrap-themes
git+https://github.com/marquicus/django-bootstrap-themes#egg=django-bootstrap-themes
# Local GIT repo package, this will install as django-knowledge
git+file:///soft/SANDBOX/python/django/forks/django-knowledge#egg=django-knowledge

Answer 2

This is the solution that I ended up using:

import pip


def install(package):
    # Debugging
    # pip.main(["install", "--pre", "--upgrade", "--no-index",
    #         "--find-links=.", package, "--log-file", "log.txt", "-vv"])
    pip.main(["install", "--upgrade", "--no-index", "--find-links=.", package])


if __name__ == "__main__":
    install("mypackagename")
    raw_input("Press Enter to Exit...\n")

I pieced this together from pip install examples as well as from Rikard's answer on another question. The "--pre" argument lets you install non-production versions. The "--no-index" argument avoids searching the PyPI indexes. The "--find-links=." argument searches in the local folder (this can be relative or absolute). I used the "--log-file", "log.txt", and "-vv" arguments for debugging. The "--upgrade" argument lets you install newer versions over older ones.

I also found a good way to uninstall them. This is useful when you have several different Python environments. It's the same basic format, just using "uninstall" instead of "install", with a safety measure to prevent unintended uninstalls:

import pip


def uninstall(package):
    response = raw_input("Uninstall '%s'? [y/n]:\n" % package)
    if "y" in response.lower():
        # Debugging
        # pip.main(["uninstall", package, "-vv"])
        pip.main(["uninstall", package])
    pass


if __name__ == "__main__":
    uninstall("mypackagename")
    raw_input("Press Enter to Exit...\n")

The local folder contains these files: install.py, uninstall.py, mypackagename-1.0.zip