A CLI tool to safely install CLI programs from PyPi
Project description
pip-safe
pip-safe
is the safe and easy pip package manager for command-line apps from PyPi.
pip-safe install lastversion
lastversion linux
Why
Using pip install ...
outside virtualenv can simply break your system.
So many tutorials out there blindly recommend that without any note of having to use virtualenvs,
and so many people do just run that without any knowledge of what a virtualenv is.
If you run an OS which distributes Python packages via yum
, apt
, etc. you will break your
system sooner or later, if you keep using pip
as root or sudo.
You either have to package the Python-based program yourself, or have to use a virtualenv for installing it. Everything else is a risk of breakage.
pip-safe
is here to make it very easy to install command-line apps from PyPi without having to
package anything.
Installation
Pre-Requisites
Configure your PATH
to execute stuff from ~/.local/bin
and /usr/local/bin
.
Place export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin:/usr/local/bin
in your ~/.bashrc
then run source ~/.bashrc
to apply to current shell.
CentOS/RHEL 7, 8
sudo yum install https://extras.getpagespeed.com/release-el$(rpm -E %{rhel})-latest.rpm
sudo yum install pip-safe
Using pip-safe
command installs stuff using Python 3.
You can additionally yum install pip2-safe
to have pip2-safe
(would be required for installing apps which support only Python 2).
Other systems
Install pip-safe
for current user
If you install pip-safe
using this method, you can only install packages for current user,
but this method does not require root.
Ensure virtualenv-3
is installed and ~/.local/bin
is in your PATH
, then:
mkdir -p ~/.virtualenvs
virtualenv-3 ~/.virtualenvs/pip-safe
~/.virtualenvs/pip-safe/bin/pip install pip-safe
ln -s $HOME/.virtualenvs/pip-safe/bin/pip-safe $HOME/.local/bin/pip-safe
System-wide installation of pip-safe
When pip-safe
is installed system-wide, you can install both system-wide and user packages with it.
Ensure virtualenv-3
is installed and /usr/local/bin
is in your PATH
, then:
mkdir -p /opt/pip-safe
virtualenv-3 /opt/pip-safe/pip-safe
/opt/pip-safe/pip-safe/bin/pip install pip-safe
ln -s /opt/pip-safe/pip-safe/bin/pip-safe /usr/local/bin/pip-safe
Usage
usage: pip-safe [-h] [-v] [-y] [--system] <command> [package-name]
positional arguments:
<command>
package-name
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-v, --verbose
-y, --assumeyes
--system
Installing a program
pip-safe install <name>
To see what's going on under the hood, pass --verbose
flag.
Global installation
By default, programs are installed to ~/.local/bin/<package>
(for current user).
For a system-wide installation, use --system
:
sudo pip-safe install --system lastversion
This installs a package to /opt/pip-safe/<package>
and symlinks its executable to /usr/local/bin
,
so it's still safe :)
Removing a program
pip-safe remove <name>
Listing installed packages
pip-safe list
With pip-safe
, you can easily install command line programs from PyPi,
while not worrying about breaking your system.
How
it installs each program into its own virtualenv, and symlinks whichever executables it has over to ~/.local/bin/
It is that easy and I don't know why nobody did this before.
Caveats
- Only pure Python apps will work absolutely reliably, because others might require system libraries and we can't decipher what are those
- Tested only with Python 3.6
Helpful stuff used while creating pip-safe
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