Pipenv: Python Development Workflow for Humans

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Pipenv — the officially recommended Python packaging tool from Python.org, free (as in freedom).

Pipenv is a tool that aims to bring the best of all packaging worlds (bundler, composer, npm, cargo, yarn, etc.) to the Python world. Windows is a first–class citizen, in our world.

It automatically creates and manages a virtualenv for your projects, as well as adds/removes packages from your Pipfile as you install/uninstall packages. It also generates the ever–important Pipfile.lock, which is used to produce deterministic builds.

The problems that Pipenv seeks to solve are multi-faceted:

• You no longer need to use pip and virtualenv separately. They work together.
• Managing a requirements.txt file can be problematic, so Pipenv uses the upcoming Pipfile and Pipfile.lock instead, which is superior for basic use cases.
• Hashes are used everywhere, always. Security. Automatically expose security vulnerabilities.
• Give you insight into your dependency graph (e.g. $ pipenv graph).
• Streamline development workflow by loading .env files.

Installation

If you're on MacOS, you can install Pipenv easily with Homebrew:

$ brew install pipenv

Or, if you're using Ubuntu 17.10:

$ sudo apt install software-properties-common python-software-properties
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pypa/ppa
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install pipenv

Otherwise, just use pip:

$ pip install pipenv

✨🍰✨

☤ User Testimonials

Jannis Leidel, former pip maintainer—

Pipenv is the porcelain I always wanted to build for pip. It fits my brain and mostly replaces virtualenvwrapper and manual pip calls for me. Use it.

David Gang—

This package manager is really awesome. For the first time I know exactly what my dependencies are which I installed and what the transitive dependencies are. Combined with the fact that installs are deterministic, makes this package manager first class, like cargo.

Justin Myles Holmes—

Pipenv is finally an abstraction meant to engage the mind instead of merely the filesystem.

☤ Features

• Enables truly deterministic builds, while easily specifying only what you want.
• Generates and checks file hashes for locked dependencies.
• Automatically install required Pythons, if pyenv is available.
• Automatically finds your project home, recursively, by looking for a Pipfile.
• Automatically generates a Pipfile, if one doesn't exist.
• Automatically creates a virtualenv in a standard location.
• Automatically adds/removes packages to a Pipfile when they are un/installed.
• Automatically loads .env files, if they exist.

The main commands are install, uninstall, and lock, which generates a Pipfile.lock. These are intended to replace $ pip install usage, as well as manual virtualenv management (to activate a virtualenv, run $ pipenv shell).

Basic Concepts

• A virtualenv will automatically be created, when one doesn't exist.
• When no parameters are passed to install, all packages [packages] specified will be installed.
• To initialize a Python 3 virtual environment, run $ pipenv --three.
• To initialize a Python 2 virtual environment, run $ pipenv --two.
• Otherwise, whatever virtualenv defaults to will be the default.

Other Commands

• shell will spawn a shell with the virtualenv activated.
• run will run a given command from the virtualenv, with any arguments forwarded (e.g. $ pipenv run python).
• check asserts that PEP 508 requirements are being met by the current environment.
• graph will print a pretty graph of all your installed dependencies.

Shell Completion

For example, with fish, put this in your ~/.config/fish/completions/pipenv.fish:

eval (pipenv --completion)

Alternatively, with bash, put this in your .bashrc or .bash_profile:

eval "$(pipenv --completion)"

Magic shell completions are now enabled! There is also a fish plugin, which will automatically activate your subshells for you!

Fish is the best shell. You should use it.

☤ Usage

$ pipenv
Usage: pipenv [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --where          Output project home information.
  --venv           Output virtualenv information.
  --py             Output Python interpreter information.
  --envs           Output Environment Variable options.
  --rm             Remove the virtualenv.
  --bare           Minimal output.
  --completion     Output completion (to be eval'd).
  --man            Display manpage.
  --three / --two  Use Python 3/2 when creating virtualenv.
  --python TEXT    Specify which version of Python virtualenv should use.
  --site-packages  Enable site-packages for the virtualenv.
  --version        Show the version and exit.
  -h, --help       Show this message and exit.


Usage Examples:
   Create a new project using Python 3.6, specifically:
   $ pipenv --python 3.6

   Install all dependencies for a project (including dev):
   $ pipenv install --dev

   Create a lockfile containing pre-releases:
   $ pipenv lock --pre

   Show a graph of your installed dependencies:
   $ pipenv graph

   Check your installed dependencies for security vulnerabilities:
   $ pipenv check

   Install a local setup.py into your virtual environment/Pipfile:
   $ pipenv install -e .

   Use a lower-level pip command:
   $ pipenv run pip freeze

Commands:
  check      Checks for security vulnerabilities and against PEP 508 markers
             provided in Pipfile.
  clean      Uninstalls all packages not specified in Pipfile.lock.
  graph      Displays currently–installed dependency graph information.
  install    Installs provided packages and adds them to Pipfile, or (if none
             is given), installs all packages.
  lock       Generates Pipfile.lock.
  open       View a given module in your editor.
  run        Spawns a command installed into the virtualenv.
  shell      Spawns a shell within the virtualenv.
  sync       Installs all packages specified in Pipfile.lock.
  uninstall  Un-installs a provided package and removes it from Pipfile.

Locate the project:

$ pipenv --where
/Users/kennethreitz/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/repos/kr/pipenv/test

Locate the virtualenv:

$ pipenv --venv
/Users/kennethreitz/.local/share/virtualenvs/test-Skyy4vre

Locate the Python interpreter:

$ pipenv --py
/Users/kennethreitz/.local/share/virtualenvs/test-Skyy4vre/bin/python

Install packages:

$ pipenv install
Creating a virtualenv for this project...
...
No package provided, installing all dependencies.
Virtualenv location: /Users/kennethreitz/.local/share/virtualenvs/test-EJkjoYts
Installing dependencies from Pipfile.lock...
...

To activate this project's virtualenv, run the following:
$ pipenv shell

Install a dev dependency:

$ pipenv install pytest --dev
Installing pytest...
...
Adding pytest to Pipfile's [dev-packages]...

Show a dependency graph:

$ pipenv graph
requests==2.18.4
  - certifi [required: >=2017.4.17, installed: 2017.7.27.1]
  - chardet [required: >=3.0.2,<3.1.0, installed: 3.0.4]
  - idna [required: >=2.5,<2.7, installed: 2.6]
  - urllib3 [required: <1.23,>=1.21.1, installed: 1.22]

Generate a lockfile:

$ pipenv lock
Assuring all dependencies from Pipfile are installed...
Locking [dev-packages] dependencies...
Locking [packages] dependencies...
Note: your project now has only default [packages] installed.
To install [dev-packages], run: $ pipenv install --dev

Install all dev dependencies:

$ pipenv install --dev
Pipfile found at /Users/kennethreitz/repos/kr/pip2/test/Pipfile. Considering this to be the project home.
Pipfile.lock out of date, updating...
Assuring all dependencies from Pipfile are installed...
Locking [dev-packages] dependencies...
Locking [packages] dependencies...

Uninstall everything:

$ pipenv uninstall --all
No package provided, un-installing all dependencies.
Found 25 installed package(s), purging...
...
Environment now purged and fresh!

Use the shell:

$ pipenv shell
Loading .env environment variables…
Launching subshell in virtual environment. Type 'exit' or 'Ctrl+D' to return.
$ ▯

☤ Documentation

Documentation resides over at pipenv.org.