How do I find the location of my Python site-packages directory?

Question

How do I find the location of my site-packages directory?

Answer 1

There are two types of site-packages directories, global and per user.

1. Global site-packages ("dist-packages") directories are listed in sys.path when you run:

   python -m site
   

   For a more concise list run getsitepackages from the site module in Python code:

   python -c 'import site; print(site.getsitepackages())'
   

   Note: With virtualenvs getsitepackages is not available, sys.path from above will list the virtualenv's site-packages directory correctly, though. In Python 3, you may use the sysconfig module instead:

   python3 -c 'import sysconfig; print(sysconfig.get_paths()["purelib"])'
   

2. The per user site-packages directory (PEP 370) is where Python installs your local packages:

   python -m site --user-site
   

   If this points to a non-existing directory check the exit status of Python and see python -m site --help for explanations.

   Hint: Running pip list --user or pip freeze --user gives you a list of all installed per user site-packages.

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Practical Tips

• <package>.__path__ lets you identify the location(s) of a specific package: (details)

  $ python -c "import setuptools as _; print(_.__path__)"
  ['/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/setuptools']
  

• <module>.__file__ lets you identify the location of a specific module: (difference)

  $ python3 -c "import os as _; print(_.__file__)"
  /usr/lib/python3.6/os.py
  

• Run pip show <package> to show Debian-style package information:

  $ pip show pytest
  Name: pytest
  Version: 3.8.2
  Summary: pytest: simple powerful testing with Python
  Home-page: https://docs.pytest.org/en/latest/
  Author: Holger Krekel, Bruno Oliveira, Ronny Pfannschmidt, Floris Bruynooghe, Brianna Laugher, Florian Bruhin and others
  Author-email: None
  License: MIT license
  Location: /home/peter/.local/lib/python3.4/site-packages
  Requires: more-itertools, atomicwrites, setuptools, attrs, pathlib2, six, py, pluggy
  

Answer 2

pip show will give all the details about a package: https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/reference/pip_show/ [pip show][1]

To get the location:

pip show <package_name>| grep Location

Answer 3

Something that has not been mentioned which I believe is useful, if you have two versions of Python installed e.g. both 3.8 and 3.5 there might be two folders called site-packages on your machine. In that case you can specify the python version by using the following:

py -3.5 -c "import site; print(site.getsitepackages()[1])

Answer 4

>>> import site; site.getsitepackages()
['/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages']

(or just first item with site.getsitepackages()[0])

Answer 5

The native system packages installed with python installation in Debian based systems can be found at :

/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/

In OSX - /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages

by using this small code :

from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib
print get_python_lib()

However, the list of packages installed via pip can be found at :

/usr/local/bin/

Or one can simply write the following command to list all paths where python packages are.

>>> import site; site.getsitepackages()
['/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages']

Note: the location might vary based on your OS, like in OSX

>>> import site; site.getsitepackages()
['/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages', '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/site-python', '/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages']

Answer 6

from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib
print get_python_lib()