How to Find the Location of My Python Site-Packages Directory

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

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

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())'
```
Caution: In virtual environments getsitepackages is not available with older versions of virtualenv, 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"])'
```
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.

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

What is python's site-packages directory?

site-packages is the target directory of manually built Python packages. When you build and install Python packages from source (using distutils, probably by executing python setup.py install), you will find the installed modules in site-packages by default.

There are standard locations:

Unix (pure)¹: prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages
Unix (non-pure): exec-prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages
Windows: prefix\Lib\site-packages

¹ Pure means that the module uses only Python code. Non-pure can contain C/C++ code as well.

site-packages is by default part of the Python search path, so modules installed there can be imported easily afterwards.

Useful reading

Installing Python Modules (for Python 2)
Installing Python Modules (for Python 3)

Where are the python modules stored?

Is there a way to obtain a list of
Python modules available (i.e.
installed) on a machine?

This works for me:

help('modules')

Where is the module code actually
stored on my machine?

Usually in /lib/site-packages in your Python folder. (At least, on Windows.)

You can use sys.path to find out what directories are searched for modules.

How to retrieve a module's path?

import a_module
print(a_module.__file__)

Will actually give you the path to the .pyc file that was loaded, at least on Mac OS X. So I guess you can do:

import os
path = os.path.abspath(a_module.__file__)

You can also try:

path = os.path.dirname(a_module.__file__)

To get the module's directory.

How do I find the location of Python module sources?

For a pure python module you can find the source by looking at themodule.__file__.
The datetime module, however, is written in C, and therefore datetime.__file__ points to a .so file (there is no datetime.__file__ on Windows), and therefore, you can't see the source.

If you download a python source tarball and extract it, the modules' code can be found in the Modules subdirectory.

For example, if you want to find the datetime code for python 2.6, you can look at

Python-2.6/Modules/datetimemodule.c

You can also find the latest version of this file on github on the web at
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Modules/_datetimemodule.c

Cannot find user site directory for Python site packages

There are 2 commands you can use to get the path to site packages:

The following will show you the path to the globally installed site packages

python -m site

and this command will show you the packages installed for that particular user

python -m site --user-site

In your case it might be that the packages are all installed globally and not for a user.

Finding python site-packages directory with CMake

You can execute external processes in cmake with execute_process (and get the output into a variable if needed, as it would be here).

Where is site-packages located in a Conda environment?

You can import the module and check the module.__file__ string. It contains the path to the associated source file.

Alternatively, you can read the File tag in the the module documentation, which can be accessed using help(module), or module? in IPython.

Where does pip install its packages?

pip when used with virtualenv will generally install packages in the path <virtualenv_name>/lib/<python_ver>/site-packages.

For example, I created a test virtualenv named venv_test with Python 2.7, and the django folder is in venv_test/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django.