How do I install a pip package globally instead of locally?
PythonPipPython Problem Overview
I am trying to install flake8 package using pip3 and it seems that it refuses to install because is already installed in one local location.
How can I force it to install globally (system level)?
pip3 install flake8
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): flake8 in ./.local/lib/python3.4/site-packages
Please note that I would prefer a generic solution (that should work on Debian, OS X maybe even Windows), one that should be used on any platform so I don't want to specify the destination myself.
For some weird reason it behaves like I already specified --user which in my case I didn't.
The only way I was able to install a package globally was to first remove it and install it again after this. Somehow it seems that pip (8.1.1) refuses to install a package globally if it exists locally.
Disclaimer: No virtual environments were used or harmed during the experiments.
Python Solutions
Solution 1 - Python
Why don't you try sudo with the H flag? This should do the trick.
sudo -H pip install flake8
A regular sudo pip install flake8 will try to use your own home directory. The -H instructs it to use the system's home directory. More info at https://stackoverflow.com/a/43623102/
Solution 2 - Python
Maybe --force-reinstall would work, otherwise --ignore-installed should do the trick.
Solution 3 - Python
> Where does pip installations happen in python?
I will give a windows solution which I was facing and took a while to solve.
First of all, in windows (I will be taking Windows as the OS here), if you do pip install <package_name>, it will be by default installed globally (if you have not activated a virtual enviroment).
Once you activate a virtual enviroment and you are inside it, all pip installations will be inside that virtual enviroment.
> pip is installing the said packages but not I cannot use them?
For this pip might be giving you a warning that the pip executables like pip3.exe, pip.exe are not on your path variable.
For this you might add this path ( usually - C:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\Roaming\Programs\Python\ ) to your enviromental variables.
After this restart your cmd, and now try to use your installed python package. It should work now.
Solution 4 - Python
For the Windows case:
Are you using virtualenv? If yes, deactivate the virtualenv. If you are not using a venv, the package should have already be installed on system level (system-wide). In that case, try to upgrade the package.
pip install flake8 --upgrade
Solution 5 - Python
For windows 10:
Installing Python for all users is straight forward since when you install you have to click a checkbox for all users.
In order to install modules globally under C:\Program Files\Python310\Lib\site-packages start CMD prompt as administrator and then install modules
python -m pip install selenium
Solution 6 - Python
I actually don‘t see your issue. Globally is any package which is in your python3 path‘s site package folder.
If you want to use it just locally then you must configure a virtualenv and reinstall the packages with an activated virtual environment.