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How pipx works

How it Works

When installing a package and its binaries on linux (pipx install package) pipx will

  • create directory ~/.local/share/pipx/venvs/PACKAGE
  • create or reuse a shared virtual environment that contains shared packaging library pip in ~/.local/share/pipx/shared/
  • ensure the library is updated to its latest version
  • create a Virtual Environment in ~/.local/share/pipx/venvs/PACKAGE that uses the shared pip mentioned above but otherwise is isolated (pipx uses a .pth file to do this)
  • install the desired package in the Virtual Environment
  • expose binaries at ~/.local/bin that point to new binaries in ~/.local/share/pipx/venvs/PACKAGE/bin (such as ~/.local/bin/black -> ~/.local/share/pipx/venvs/black/bin/black)
  • expose manual pages at ~/.local/share/man/man[1-9] that point to new manual pages in ~/.local/pipx/venvs/PACKAGE/share/man/man[1-9]
  • as long as ~/.local/bin/ is on your PATH, you can now invoke the new binaries globally
  • on operating systems which have the man command, as long as ~/.local/share/man is a recognized search path of man, you can now view the new manual pages globally
  • adding --global flag to any pipx command will execute the action in global scope which will expose app to all users - reference. Note that this is not available on Windows.

When running a binary (pipx run BINARY), pipx will

  • create or reuse a shared virtual environment that contains the shared packaging library pip
  • ensure the library is updated to its latest version
  • create a temporary directory (or reuse a cached virtual environment for this package) with a name based on a hash of the attributes that make the run reproducible. This includes things like the package name, spec, python version, and pip arguments.
  • create a Virtual Environment inside it with python -m venv
  • install the desired package in the Virtual Environment
  • invoke the binary

These are all things you can do yourself, but pipx automates them for you. If you are curious as to what pipx is doing behind the scenes, you can always pass the --verbose flag to see every single command and argument being run.

Developing for pipx

If you are a developer and want to be able to run

pipx install MY_PACKAGE

make sure you include scripts and, optionally for Windows GUI applications gui-scripts, sections under your main table1 in pyproject.toml or their legacy equivalents for setup.cfg and setup.py.

[project.scripts]
foo = "my_package.some_module:main_func"
bar = "other_module:some_func"

[project.gui-scripts]
baz = "my_package_gui:start_func"

[options.entry_points]
console_scripts =
    foo = my_package.some_module:main_func
    bar = other_module:some_func
gui_scripts =
    baz = my_package_gui:start_func

setup(
    # other arguments here...
    entry_points={
        'console_scripts': [
            'foo = my_package.some_module:main_func',
            'bar = other_module:some_func',
        ],
        'gui_scripts': [
            'baz = my_package_gui:start_func',
        ]
    },
)

In this case foo and bar (and baz on Windows) would be available as "applications" to pipx after installing the above example package, invoking their corresponding entry point functions.

Manual pages

If you wish to provide documentation via man pages on UNIX-like systems then these can be added as data files:

pyproject.toml
[tool.setuptools.data-files]
"share/man/man1" = [
  "manpage.1",
]
setup.cfg
[options.data_files]
share/man/man1 =
    manpage.1
setup.py
setup(
    # other arguments here...
    data_files=[('share/man/man1', ['manpage.1'])]
)

Warning

The data-files keyword is "discouraged" in the setuptools documentation but there is no alternative if man pages are a requirement.

pyproject.toml
[tool.pdm.build]
source-includes = ["share"]

[tool.pdm.build.wheel-data]
data = [
    {path = "share/man/man1/*", relative-to = "."},
]

In this case the manual page manpage.1 could be accessed by the user after installing the above example package.

For a real-world example, see pycowsay's setup.py source code.

You can read more about entry points here.

  1. This is often the [project] table, but might also be differently named. Read more in the PyPUG. ↩