How to install externally hosted files using pip

As of writing (12, May 2014) latest version of pip is 1.5.1. pip doesn’tallow installing packages from non PyPI based url.It is possible to upload tar or zip or tar.gz file to PyPI or specifydownload url which points other sites(Example: pyPdf points to http://pybrary.net/pyPdf/pyPdf-1.13.tar.gz).pip considers externally hosted packages as insecure. Agreed.

This is one of the reason why I kept using pip 1.4.1. Finally decided to fix this issue.Below is the sample error which pip throws.

(document-converter)➜  document-converter git:(fix_requirements) pip install pyPdf
Downloading/unpacking pyPdf
Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement pyPdf
Some externally hosted files were ignored (use --allow-external pyPdf to allow).
Cleaning up...
No distributions at all found for pyPdf
Storing debug log for failure in /Users/kracekumar/.pip/pip.log

(document-converter)➜  document-converter git:(fix_requirements) pip install --allow-external pyPdf
You must give at least one requirement to install (see "pip help install")
(document-converter)➜  document-converter git:(fix_requirements) pip install pyPdf --allow-external pyPdf
Downloading/unpacking pyPdf
Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement pyPdf
Some insecure and unverifiable files were ignored (use --allow-unverified pyPdf to allow).
Cleaning up...
No distributions at all found for pyPdf
Storing debug log for failure in /Users/kracekumar/.pip/pip.log

The above method is super confusing and counter intutive. Fix is

(document-converter)➜  document-converter git:(fix_requirements) pip install pyPdf --allow-external pyPdf --allow-unverified pyPdf
Downloading/unpacking pyPdf
pyPdf an externally hosted file and may be unreliable
pyPdf is potentially insecure and unverifiable.
Downloading pyPdf-1.13.tar.gz
Running setup.py (path:/Users/kracekumar/Envs/document-converter/build/pyPdf/setup.py) egg_info for package pyPdf

Installing collected packages: pyPdf
Running setup.py install for pyPdf

Successfully installed pyPdf
Cleaning up...

The above method is not used in production environment. In production environment it is recommended to do pip install -r requirements.txt.

# requirements.txt
--allow-external pyPdf
--allow-unverified pyPdf
pyPdf
--allow-external xhtml2pdf==0.0.5

pyPdf has two issues, two flags needs to mentioned in requirements.txt. Since xhtml2pdf requires pyPdf --allow-external flag is passed. Wish it was possible to pass both the switches in same line. If you do so pip will ignore it. Now running pip install -r requirements.txt will works like a charm(with warnings).

Since current approach is super confusing, there is a discussion. Thanks Ivoz for helping me to resolve this.

python pip

See also