Here's the solution I put together which I call pyInstall.py
. It actually checks whether the module is installed rather than relying on ImportError
(it just looks cleaner, in my opinion, to handle this with an if
rather than a try
/except
).
I've used it under version 2.6 and 2.7... it would probably work in older versions if I didn't want to handle print
as a function... and I think it'll work in version 3.0+ but I've never tried it.
Also, as I note in the comments of my getPip
function, I don't think that particular function will work under OS X.
from __future__ import print_function
from subprocess import call
def installPip(log=print):
"""
Pip is the standard package manager for Python. Starting with Python 3.4
it's included in the default installation, but older versions may need to
download and install it. This code should pretty cleanly do just that.
"""
log("Installing pip, the standard Python Package Manager, first")
from os import remove
from urllib import urlretrieve
urlretrieve("https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py", "get-pip.py")
call(["python", "get-pip.py"])
# Clean up now...
remove("get-pip.py")
def getPip(log=print):
"""
Pip is the standard package manager for Python.
This returns the path to the pip executable, installing it if necessary.
"""
from os.path import isfile, join
from sys import prefix
# Generate the path to where pip is or will be installed... this has been
# tested and works on Windows, but will likely need tweaking for other OS's.
# On OS X, I seem to have pip at /usr/local/bin/pip?
pipPath = join(prefix, 'Scripts', 'pip.exe')
# Check if pip is installed, and install it if it isn't.
if not isfile(pipPath):
installPip(log)
if not isfile(pipPath):
raise("Failed to find or install pip!")
return pipPath
def installIfNeeded(moduleName, nameOnPip=None, notes="", log=print):
""" Installs a Python library using pip, if it isn't already installed. """
from pkgutil import iter_modules
# Check if the module is installed
if moduleName not in [tuple_[1] for tuple_ in iter_modules()]:
log("Installing " + moduleName + notes + " Library for Python")
call([getPip(log), "install", nameOnPip if nameOnPip else moduleName])
Here are some usage examples:
from datetime import datetime
from pyInstall import installIfNeeded
# I like to have my messages timestamped so I can get an idea of how long they take.
def log(message):
print(datetime.now().strftime("%a %b %d %H:%M:%S") + " - " + str(message))
# The name fabric doesn't really convey to the end user why the module is needed,
# so I include a very quick note that it's used for SSH.
installIfNeeded("fabric", notes = " (ssh)", log = log)
# SoftLayer is actually named softlayer on pip.
installIfNeeded("SoftLayer", "softlayer", log = log)
Edit: A more cross-platform way of getting pipPath is:
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
finder = Popen(['where' if isWindows() else 'which', 'pip'], stdout = PIPE, stderr = PIPE)
pipPath = finder.communicate()[0].strip()
This makes the assumption that pip
is/will be installed on the system path. It tends to be pretty reliable on non-Windows platforms, but on Windows it may be better to use the code in my original answer.