pip

Author

Clayton Cafiero

Published

2025-01-05

Warning

If you’re using Anaconda or Mini-conda, it’s best not to use pip to install packages. See the Anaconda documentation for more on this, or look for instructions specifically for Anaconda or Mini-conda.

What is pip?

pip is a utility function that’s used for installing, upgrading, and uninstalling packages from the PyPI public repository. For example, we can use pip to install the colorama package (colorama is a module that facilitates displaying colored text).

Example:

(my_venv) $ pip install colorama
Collecting colorama
  Using cached colorama-0.4.6-py2.py3-none-any.whl (25 kB)
Installing collected packages: colorama
Successfully installed colorama-0.4.6

(my_venv) $

At this point, the colorama package is installed and ready for use.

pip is the preferred installer program. Starting with Python 3.4, it is included by default with the Python binary installers.

– https://docs.python.org/3/installing/index.html

If you get an error complaining that there is no python or pip…

On some systems, python might be named python3. If you find yourself in that situation, just substitute python3 for python and pip3 for pip wherever they appear in the instructions.

For more information and documentation, see:

What is PyPI?

The Python Package Index (PyPI) is a repository of software for the Python programming language.

PyPI helps you find and install software developed and shared by the Python community.

PyPI is a huge public repository of packages you can use with Python. To browse or search, visit https://pypi.org/.

For more information

For more information on installing packages/modules, see:

Copyright © 2023–2025 Clayton Cafiero

No generative AI was used in producing this material. This was written the old-fashioned way.