How to Get a List of Locally Installed Python Modules

How do I get a list of locally installed Python modules?

Solution

Do not use with pip > 10.0!

My 50 cents for getting a pip freeze-like list from a Python script:

import pip
installed_packages = pip.get_installed_distributions()
installed_packages_list = sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version)
     for i in installed_packages])
print(installed_packages_list)

As a (too long) one liner:

sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version) for i in pip.get_installed_distributions()])

Giving:

['behave==1.2.4', 'enum34==1.0', 'flask==0.10.1', 'itsdangerous==0.24', 
 'jinja2==2.7.2', 'jsonschema==2.3.0', 'markupsafe==0.23', 'nose==1.3.3', 
 'parse-type==0.3.4', 'parse==1.6.4', 'prettytable==0.7.2', 'requests==2.3.0',
 'six==1.6.1', 'vioozer-metadata==0.1', 'vioozer-users-server==0.1', 
 'werkzeug==0.9.4']

Scope

This solution applies to the system scope or to a virtual environment scope, and covers packages installed by setuptools, pip and (god forbid) easy_install.

My use case

I added the result of this call to my flask server, so when I call it with http://example.com/exampleServer/environment I get the list of packages installed on the server's virtualenv. It makes debugging a whole lot easier.

Caveats

I have noticed a strange behaviour of this technique - when the Python interpreter is invoked in the same directory as a setup.py file, it does not list the package installed by setup.py.

Steps to reproduce:

Create a virtual environment

$ cd /tmp
$ virtualenv test_env
New python executable in test_env/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip...done.
$ source test_env/bin/activate
(test_env) $ 

Clone a git repo with setup.py

(test_env) $ git clone https://github.com/behave/behave.git
Cloning into 'behave'...
remote: Reusing existing pack: 4350, done.
remote: Total 4350 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (4350/4350), 1.85 MiB | 418.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (2388/2388), done.
Checking connectivity... done.

We have behave's setup.py in /tmp/behave:

(test_env) $ ls /tmp/behave/setup.py
/tmp/behave/setup.py

Install the python package from the git repo

(test_env) $ cd /tmp/behave && pip install . 
running install
...
Installed /private/tmp/test_env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/enum34-1.0-py2.7.egg
Finished processing dependencies for behave==1.2.5a1

If we run the aforementioned solution from /tmp

>>> import pip
>>> sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version) for i in pip.get_installed_distributions()])
['behave==1.2.5a1', 'enum34==1.0', 'parse-type==0.3.4', 'parse==1.6.4', 'six==1.6.1']
>>> import os
>>> os.getcwd()
'/private/tmp'

If we run the aforementioned solution from /tmp/behave

>>> import pip
>>> sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version) for i in pip.get_installed_distributions()])
['enum34==1.0', 'parse-type==0.3.4', 'parse==1.6.4', 'six==1.6.1']
>>> import os
>>> os.getcwd()
'/private/tmp/behave'

behave==1.2.5a1 is missing from the second example, because the working directory contains behave's setup.py file.

I could not find any reference to this issue in the documentation. Perhaps I shall open a bug for it.

How to list all installed packages and their versions in Python?

If you have pip install and you want to see what packages have been installed with your installer tools you can simply call this:

pip freeze

It will also include version numbers for the installed packages.

Update

pip has been updated to also produce the same output as pip freeze by calling:

pip list

Note

The output from pip list is formatted differently, so if you have some shell script that parses the output (maybe to grab the version number) of freeze and want to change your script to call list, you'll need to change your parsing code.

How can I see all installed Python modules in Jupyter Lab (like pip freeze) with Python 3.7 or newer?

import pip._internal.operations.freeze
_ = pip._internal.operations.freeze.get_installed_distributions()
print(sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version) for i in _])[:10])
['absl-py==0.7.1',
 'aiml==0.9.2',
 'aio-utils==0.0.1',
 'aiocache==0.10.1',
 'aiocontextvars==0.2.2',
 'aiocqhttp==0.6.7',
 'aiodns==2.0.0',
 'aiofiles==0.4.0',
 'aiohttp-proxy==0.1.1',
 'aiohttp==3.6.2']

This works in Win10 with Python 3.6 & 3.7 (ipython, pip.version: '20.0.1') at least. I took a look at the source code in Lib\site-packages\pip.

How do I see what Python modules are installed, and what version?

Looks like all you need is the pip list command on your terminal

Is there a standard way to list names of Python modules in a package?

Maybe this will do what you're looking for?

import imp
import os
MODULE_EXTENSIONS = ('.py', '.pyc', '.pyo')

def package_contents(package_name):
    file, pathname, description = imp.find_module(package_name)
    if file:
        raise ImportError('Not a package: %r', package_name)
    # Use a set because some may be both source and compiled.
    return set([os.path.splitext(module)[0]
        for module in os.listdir(pathname)
        if module.endswith(MODULE_EXTENSIONS)])

Where are the python modules stored?

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

This works for me:

help('modules')

2. 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.

---

Related Topics