How to update python module

How To Update/Upgrade A Python Package with Pip?

Python provides the Pip or Python Package Index which is used to add useful extra modules to the Python. The pip is command is provided to search, install, update, and remove the modules provided by the Python Package Index. One of the most popular use cases for pip command is updating existing and already installed Python packages. In this tutorial, we will examine different cases for update and upgrade Python packages.

List Installed Python Packages with Pip

Before updating any package the best practice is listing installed packages. The pip command provides the list parameter which will list installed packages. Also version information about the installed packages will be provided. pip is used for the Python2 and pip3 is used for the Python3.

The following output will be provided with the package names and version information.

Check If Specified Python Package Is Installated with Pip

As the list parameter lists installed pip packages with their version information we can also check for the specific package by using an external command like grep. We will provide the package name we want to check and list. In the following example, we will check for different packages. If the package is not installed there will be no output. We can also provide only some part of the package name and all matched packages will be listed below.

List Outdated Python Packages

From the output we can see that the installed version of the package and most recent version provided by the Pip is listed for every package.

Update/Upgrade Python Package To The Latest Version with Pip

Update/Upgrade Python Package To Specific Version with Pip

By default, the specified package will be updated or upgraded to the latest version. But this can be a problem if we need a specific version of the Python package. This generally occurs where some software depends on and supports a specific version of the Python package. We can provide the version we want to update with the == sign and provide the version information.

Downgrade Python Package To The Specific version with Pip

The downgrade is the operation of installing an older version of the specified package. We can downgrade the Python package to the specific version by using the == with the install command.

How do I update a Python package?

I’m running Ubuntu 9:10 and a package called M2Crypto is installed (version is 0.19.1). I need to download, build and install the latest version of the M2Crypto package (0.20.2).

The 0.19.1 package has files in a number of locations including (/usr/share/pyshared and /usr/lib/pymodules.python2.6).

How can I completely uninstall version 0.19.1 from my system before installing 0.20.2?

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The best way I’ve found is to run this command from terminal

sudo will ask to enter your root password to confirm the action.

Note: Some users may have pip3 installed instead. In that case, use

You might want to look into a Python package manager like pip. If you don’t want to use a Python package manager, you should be able to download M2Crypto and build/compile/install over the old installation.

To automatically upgrade all the outdated packages (that were installed using pip), just run the script bellow,

Then use the following lines of script to prepare it:

Then, just hit pip-upgrade and voila!

Again, this will uninstall the previous version of pip and will install the latest version of pip.

I think the best one-liner is:

Open Command prompt or terminal and use below syntax

How was the package originally installed? If it was via apt, you could just be able to do apt-get remove python-m2crypto

If you installed it via easy_install, I’m pretty sure the only way is to just trash the files under lib, shared, etc..

My recommendation in the future? Use something like pip to install your packages. Furthermore, you could look up into something called virtualenv so your packages are stored on a per-environment basis, rather than solely on root.

With pip, it’s pretty easy:

But you can also install from git, svn, etc repos with the right address. This is all explained in the pip documentation

In Juptyer notebook, a very simple way is

So, you just need to replace with the actual package name.

How can I completely uninstall version 0.19.1 from my system before installing 0.20.2?

In order to uninstall M2Crypto use

I need to download, build and install the latest version of the M2Crypto package (0.20.2).

In order to install the latest version, one can use PyPi

To install the version 20.2 (an outdated one), run

Assuming one just wants to upgrade

Using sudo is considered unsafe.

Nowadays there are better practices to manage the development system, such as: virtual environments or development containers. The development containers allow one to put the entire development environment (be it modules, VS Code extensions, npm libraries. ) inside a Docker container. When the project comes to an end, one closes the container. There’s no need to keep all of those requirements around in the computer for no reason. If you feel like reading more about it: Visual Studio Docs, Github.

How to Update All Python Packages

With Python, the best practice of pinning all the packages in an environment at a specific version ensures that the environment can be reproduced months or even years later.

As packages age, many of them are likely to have vulnerabilities and bugs logged against them. In order to maintain the security and performance of your application, you’ll need to update these packages to a newer version that fixes the issue.

The pip package manager can be used to update one or more packages system-wide. However, if your deployment is located in a virtual environment, you should use the Pipenv package manager to update all Python packages.

NOTE: be aware that upgrading packages can break your environment by installing incompatible dependencies. This is because pip and pipenv do not resolve dependencies, unlike the ActiveState Platform. To ensure your environment doesn’t break on upgrade, you can sign up for a free ActiveState Platform account and import your current requirements.txt, ready to be upgraded.

Python Package Upgrade Checklist

In general, you can use the following steps to perform a package upgrade:

1. Check that Python is installed

Before packages can be updated, ensure that a Python installation containing the necessary files needed for updating packages is in place by following the steps outlined in Installation Requirements >

2. Get a list of all the outdated packages

To generate a list of all outdated packages:

3. Upgrade outdated packages

Depending on your operating system or virtual environment, refer to the following sections.

Update all Python Packages on Windows

The easiest way to update all packages in a Windows environment is to use pip in conjunction with Windows PowerShell:

This will upgrade all packages system-wide to the latest version available in the Python Package Index (PyPI).

Update all Python Packages on Linux

Linux provides a number of ways to use pip in order to upgrade Python packages, including grep and awk.

To upgrade all packages using pip with grep on Ubuntu Linux:

To upgrade all packages using pip with awk on Ubuntu Linux:

Updating Python Packages on Windows or Linux

Pip can be used to upgrade all packages on either Windows or Linux:

Updating all Packages in a Virtual Environment

The easiest way to update unpinned packages (i.e., packages that do not require a specific version) in a virtual environment is to run the following Python script that makes use of pip:

Updating all Packages in a Pipenv Environment

The simplest way to update all the unpinned packages in a specific virtual environment created with pipenv is to do the following steps:

Modern way to manage Python packages – ActiveState Platform

The ActiveState Platform is a cloud-based build automation and dependency management tool for Python. It provides dependency resolution for:

The ActiveState Platform is the only Python package management solution that not only resolves dependencies but also provides workarounds for dependency conflicts.

Simply following the instruction prompts will resolve the conflict, eliminating dependency hell.

You can try the ActiveState Platform for free by creating an account using your email or your GitHub credentials. Start by creating a new Python project, pick the latest version that applies to your project, your OS and start to add packages. Or start by simply importing your requirements.txt file and creating a Python version with all the packages you need. The Platform will automatically pick the right package versions for your environment to ensure security and reproducibility.

Watch this tutorial to learn how to use the ActiveState Platform to create a Python 3.9 environment, and then use the Platform’s Command-Line Interface (State Tool) to install and manage it.

Ready to see for yourself? You can try the ActiveState Platform by signing up for a free account using your email or GitHub credentials.

Just run the following command to install Python 3.9 and our package manager, the State Tool:

Windows

Linux

Now you can run state install

. Learn more about how to use the State Tool to manage your Python environment. Or sign up for a free demo and let us show you how it can help improve your dev team’s workflow by compiling Python packages and resolve dependencies in minutes.

Upgrade all packages in Python using pip

In this article, we will learn to upgrade all Python packages using pip manager. We will use some built-in functions, pip Python manager available in Python to upgrade all packages available in Python. Let’s first have a quick look over what is a pip in Python.

The Pip Python Package Manager

Programmers generally use virtual environments and pip package while working with the Python programming language. When working with projects in Python, users have packages versions being used are defined, which starts growing with time and some packages start to be outdated. pip Python manager is designed to upgrade the python packages system-wide. Let us look at different ways to use pip to upgrade packages from older versions to newer or latest versions.

Update all packages using pip on Windows

Update all packages using pip on Linux

Linux provides a number of ways to use pip in order to upgrade python packages. This includes two ways using grep and awk.

Command for either Windows or Linux for updating packages

pip freeze first outputs a list of installed packages into a requirements file (requirements.txt). Then the user needs to edit requirements.txt, and replace all ‘ == ’ with ‘ >= ’. Use the ‘Replace All’ command in the editor. It then upgrades all outdated packages.

Updating all packages in a Virtual Environment

For pip = 10.0.1

Updating all Local Packages using pip-review

Conclusion

In this article, we learned different commands to upgrade or update all Python packages using pip manager in Python. We saw two main methods such as pip freeze and pip review to update packages.

Learn all About Installing & Updating Packages in Python

In this tutorial, we will learn the basics of installing, working and updating packages in Python. First, we will learn how to install Python packages, then how to use them, and finally, how to update Python packages when needed. More specifically, we are going to learn how to install and upgrade packages using pip, conda, and Anaconda Navigator.

Table of Contents

Python Packages

Now, before we are going to learn how to install Python packages we are going to answer the question “what is a package in Python?”

What is meant by packages in Python?

Python packages are collection of modules. More specifically, a package typically contains Python functions, methods, and sometimes data, that are packaged in a well-defined format. When we install a package, it gives us access to a set of functions or methods that are not available in the base Python

What is pip in Python?

pip is a standard package-management system that we can use to install and manage software packages written in Python. A lot of the Python packages can be found in the default source for packages and their dependencies — Python Package Index (PyPI). pip is an acronyn and stands for “Pip Installs Packages”. That is, we use pip to install Python packages. For example, pip install pandas will install the Python package Pandas and it’s dependencies.

Installing Packages in Python

There are several methods that enable us to install Python packages. As previously mentioned, in this post we will learn how to install Python packages using pip, conda package manager, and Anaconda Navigator. Note, if using conda package manager or Anaconda Navigator we need to have the Python distribution Anaconda installed.

How to install a Python Package using pip.

First, we are going to learn how to install Pandas using pip. It’s quite easy! If we are using Windows we start up the Command Prompt. Note, this is done by pressing the Windows icon in the left lower corner (or on your keyboard) and typing “Command Prompt”.

If we want to install multiple Python packages at the same time, we just add them after the first:

Note, it is also possible to use pip to install a specific version of a Python package. For example, you can add “==” after the package name followed by the version of the package you want to install.

How to install a Python Package using conda

Note, here we can choose which repository we want to install the Python packages from. In the example above, we used the anaconda repository. However, if we want to use another repo we can, of course, do this. For instance, if we want to use conda-forge, the community-led repo, to install Python packages we type the following command:

How to install a Python Package using Anaconda Navigator

Finally, we are going to learn to install Python packages using the Anaconda Navigator. To start Anaconda Navigator, we need to have Anaconda installed (see above) and we press the windows icon, down to the left. Here we type, “Anaconda Navigator” and press enter (or click on the app). Basically, there are 7 steps to install a Python package using Anaconda Navigator.

7 Steps to Installing a Python Package in Anaconda Navigator

Bonus: Installing Python Packages in a Virtual Environment

Now, as a bonus, we will learn how to create an environment, using conda, and install Python packages in this environment. First, we start up the Anaconda Prompt.

Creating a Python Environment using conda

Now, that we have the Anaconda Prompt we can continue to create a Python environment. Creating a Python environment is easy when we are using conda. We just type the following command:

Note, “pandasenv” is the name of the Python environment. If we want our Python environment to have any other name we just change this to the name we want.

Activating the Python Environment

Next, we need to activate the environment. Now, we just type conda activate pandasenv to activate our Python environment.

Installing a Python package in a Python Environment

How to use a Python Package

Once a Python package is installed (basically the functions, methods, and so on, are downloaded to your computer), we need to “call” the package into the current session of Python. This is essentially like saying, “Hey Python, we will be using these functions and methods now, please have them ready to go”. Note, that we have to do this every time we start a new Python script or session, so this should be at the top of our script.

When we want to call a package, use import

or often we follow some kind of convention and type import

What Python Packages are Installed Now?

If we ever are curious about what Python packages that we have installed on our computers, we can, of course, check this. In this section, we are going to learn how to list all the installed Python packages using pip and conda.

List all Installed Python Packages using pip

Here, we are going to use pip to list all the installed Python packages. Note, in the example here, we use pip in a Python environment and there are not many packages installed. If we have a lot more packages installed, the result will, of course, look different. Here’s one way to get all the installed Python packages using pip:

See all Installed Python Packages using conda

If we have Anaconda installed, we can also check out the Environments tab. Here we can check what Python packages we have installed in our different environments. We just leave the dropdown on “Installed” and we can scroll down to see all the installed packages.

Updating Python Packages

In this section, we are going to learn how to update Python packages using pip and conda. This comes in handy as sometimes packages are updated by the users who created them. Updating packages can sometimes make changes to both the package and also to how your code runs. Before we update a Python package, we need to make sure we know what any changes are new and how potentially may affect our code. That is, if we have a lot of Python code, upgrading a Python package may completely change the behavior, or functionality, of our code.

Conda: Updating Python Packages

If we have Anaconda installed, we can update a Python package using conda. More specifically, we use the command conda update

Updating all Python Packages using conda

If we want to update ALL installed Python packages, we remove the package name and add the “—all” argument:

Upgrading Python Packages using Pip

Sometimes, of course, pip gets an update and we may want to update pip. This can be done, using pip itself, the conda package manager, and the Anaconda Navigator. See more about this in the post 3 easy methods to update pip.

Conclusion:

In this post, we have learned how to install Python packages, how to use them, and how to upgrade Python packages.