What Is pip? A Guide for New Pythonistas

A Beginner's Guide to Pip

Austin Cepalia

Austin Cepalia 10 Lessons 34m
basics tools

What is pip? pip is the standard package manager for Python. It allows you to install and manage additional packages that are not part of the Python standard library. This course is an introduction to pip for new Pythonistas.

In this course, you’ll learn about:

  • Installing additional packages not included with the standard Python distribution
  • Finding packages published to the Python Package Index (PyPI)
  • Managing requirements for your scripts and applications
  • Uninstalling packages and their dependencies

As you’ll see, the Python community is very active and has created some neat alternatives to pip that you’ll learn about later in this course.

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A Beginner's Guide to Pip

10 Lessons 34m

1. A Beginner's Guide to Pip (Overview) (02:37)

2. Scripts, Modules, Packages, and Libraries (05:20)

3. Why Can’t Python Find My Modules? (06:40)

4. What is a Package Manager? (01:55)

5. Getting Started with Pip and PyPI (07:15)

6. Using Requirement Files (04:04)

7. Production vs Development Dependencies (03:11)

8. Uninstalling Packages (01:27)

9. Alternatives to Pip (01:19)

10. A Beginner's Guide to Pip (Summary) (00:42)

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About Austin Cepalia

Austin Cepalia Austin Cepalia

Austin is a video tutorial author at Real Python. He's currently a sophomore working toward a degree in computer science at Rochester Institute of Technology.

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Each tutorial at Real Python is created by a team of developers so that it meets our high quality standards. The team members who worked on this tutorial are:

Christopher Bailey

Christopher
Tappan Moore

Tappan
Joanna Jablonski

Joanna
Isaac Rodriguez

Isaac
Dan Bader

Dan
Brad Solomon

Brad
Aldren Santos

Aldren

Participant Comments

Marat Sabirov on May 26, 2020

Awesome! I already used Anaconda on Windows, and now I know how it works on Linux. Big Thx to Austin =)

Alan ODannel on May 27, 2020

A nice pip refresher course. I picked up a couple of tips that I wasn’t aware of.

Simon Keating on May 28, 2020

Great overview that will help me avoid frustrations experienced working across multiple computers and environments.

Antonio Soares on May 29, 2020

This was very cool. I had a very loose understanding of packages and some vague awareness of virtual environments (or I think I did) through the Anaconda Navigator. Using virtual environments and keeping track/upgrading dependencies is something I never thought possible and it’s very cool how it’s been implemented. I’m not a software developer so I’m very impressed with how these basic functionalities can help keep a programmer sane when the complexity starts to pile up later on.

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