Installing and using pipx for command-line Python tools

June 3, 2020 ยท View on GitHub

pipx is a utility for installing and running Python applications in isolated environments. This means it allows you to install command-line tools like tox in their own virtualenv that pipx manages for you using simple, pip-like commands.

Installing pipx

To install pipx on macOS, use Homebrew:

brew update
brew install pipx

If you've already installed it, it couldn't hurt to update it:

brew update
brew upgrade pipx

Configuring pipx

pipx comes with a little helper to add the things that pipx installs to your path, so you can run them:

pipx ensurepath

The only catch with that command is that it adds the pipx binary path after your existing path; as a result, the Docker Desktop version of Docker Compose will take precedence. So, we need to modify what it added. Open your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file and look toward the bottom for the following line:

export PATH="$PATH:/Users/<username>/.local/bin"

We're going to reverse the order of that so ~/.local/bin comes before the existing $PATH. Update it to look like so (remembering to replace <username> if you copy and paste from here):

export PATH="/Users/<username>/.local/bin:$PATH"

You might also want to take this opportunity to move it to wherever you have other path modifications.

pipx also has a helper that provides shell completion instructions:

pipx completions

Now open a new shell, or source whatever file(s) you just modified in your current shell.

Installing command-line tools with pipx

You can now use pipx to install packages that provide command-line tools just like pip. To install a package from PyPI:

pipx install PACKAGE

For example, to install tox:

pipx install tox

You can also inject another Python package into pipx's isolated environment for a package. For example, to install the tox plugin tox-pip-extensions:

pipx inject tox tox-pip-extensions

Further reading