A Beginner's Guide to pip

What is pip? pip is the standard package manager for Python. It allows you to install and manage additional packages that are not part of the Python standard library. This course is an introduction to pip for new Pythonistas.

In this course, you’ll learn about:

  • Installing additional packages not included with the standard Python distribution
  • Finding packages published to the Python Package Index (PyPI)
  • Managing requirements for your scripts and applications
  • Uninstalling packages and their dependencies

As you’ll see, the Python community is very active and has created some neat alternatives to pip that you’ll learn about later in this course.

What’s Included:

Related Learning Paths:

About Austin Cepalia

Austin Cepalia Austin Cepalia

Austin is a video tutorial author at Real Python. He's currently a student working towards a degree in computer science at Rochester Institute of Technology.

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Each tutorial at Real Python is created by a team of developers so that it meets our high quality standards. The team members who worked on this tutorial are:

Participant Comments

Oliver Frolovs on July 8, 2022

I think I finally understood the bewildering landscape of environment isolation and dependency management tools in Python. Thank you!

Matyi on March 30, 2021

Very useful course, it summed up a lot of things in just a half an hour what I had learned from years of experiences. Even I filled a few gaps. Thank you very much!

ellefore on July 2, 2020

Very helpful course!

Antonio Soares on May 29, 2020

This was very cool. I had a very loose understanding of packages and some vague awareness of virtual environments (or I think I did) through the Anaconda Navigator. Using virtual environments and keeping track/upgrading dependencies is something I never thought possible and it’s very cool how it’s been implemented. I’m not a software developer so I’m very impressed with how these basic functionalities can help keep a programmer sane when the complexity starts to pile up later on.

Simon Keating on May 28, 2020

Great overview that will help me avoid frustrations experienced working across multiple computers and environments.

Alan ODannel on May 27, 2020

A nice pip refresher course. I picked up a couple of tips that I wasn’t aware of.

Marat Sabirov on May 26, 2020

Awesome! I already used Anaconda on Windows, and now I know how it works on Linux. Big Thx to Austin =)

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