12

As explained in pip's documentation a user can install packages in his personal account using pip install --user <pkg>.

How can I programmatically determine the user install location for scripts installed like this? I am talking about the directory that should be added to the PATH so that installed packages can be invoked from command line.

For example, in Windows when installing pip install -U pylint --user I get the following warning because I don't have 'C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\Scripts' in my PATH:

...
Installing collected packages: wrapt, six, typed-ast, lazy-object-proxy, astroid, mccabe, isort, colorama, toml, pylint
  Running setup.py install for wrapt ... done
  WARNING: The script isort.exe is installed in 'C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\Scripts' which is not on PATH.
  Consider adding this directory to PATH or, if you prefer to suppress this warning, use --no-warn-script-location.
  WARNING: The scripts epylint.exe, pylint.exe, pyreverse.exe and symilar.exe are installed in 'C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\Scripts' which is not on PATH.

Is there some python code I can use to determine that location programmatically (that will work on Windows/Linux/Darwin/etc)? Something like:

def get_user_install_scripts_dir():
    ...
    # would return 'C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\Scripts'
    # on Windows with Python 3.7.x, '/home/myusername/.local/bin' in Linux, etc
    return platform_scripts_dir

As a fallback, is there some command I can run to obtain this location? Something like (but for the script location not the site's base directory):

PS C:\Users\myusername\> python -m site --user-base
C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Roaming\Python

$ python -m site --user-base
/home/myusername/.local
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3
  • Maybe this isn't a solution to your problem, but have you considered using a virtual environment? That way your local pip/python installation can exist independently of other projects on your computer. Commented Jun 2, 2020 at 23:35
  • I do user virtual environments for my projects and usually isolated so that they don't mix with site packages. This question is really about the case of a user install outside a virtual environment. Commented Jun 2, 2020 at 23:39
  • @Alexandros try import sys; print(sys.path) Commented Jun 3, 2020 at 0:43

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
14

I believe the following should give the expected result

import os
import sysconfig

user_scripts_path = sysconfig.get_path('scripts', f'{os.name}_user')
print(user_scripts_path)

Command-line:

python -c 'import os,sysconfig;print(sysconfig.get_path("scripts",f"{os.name}_user"))'

Since pip 21.3 released on 2021-10-11, pip itself uses sysconfig to compute paths.

References:

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2 Comments

Why doesn't pip config get global.target return anything when there is no global/user/site pip.conf file defined? pip still installs into a default path in that scenario, but there's no way to GET that path from the command line?
@beporter I do not know, and I have not tried this myself. But that is quite a different question, than what is being discussed here. Anyway... I guess pip config returns nothing when nothing overrides the default (i.e. when there is no pip.conf). But you might be on to something, and it might be better if it did indeed return the default non-overridden value. It might be worth asking this question and requesting the feature change in pip's ticket tracker.
1

Command-line:

python -c "import os, site; print(os.path.join(site.USER_BASE, 'Scripts' if os.name == 'nt' else 'bin'))"

Function:

import os, site

if os.name == 'nt':
    bin_dir = 'Scripts'
else:
    bin_dir = 'bin'

def get_user_install_bin_dir():
    return os.path.join(site.USER_BASE, bin_dir)
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5 Comments

I do know about site.getuserbase() and am currently doing this. But since you mention it please add something like '\\Python%d%d\\Scripts' % sys.version_info[:2] when on Windows, because Scripts is not directly under the user base. That's why I'm hoping there's some API to get this as opposed to manually massaging the path...
@Alexandros Not for me. I just installed a package with scripts and pip put the scripts into …\AppData\Roaming\Python\Scripts. It's site-packages in versioned directory, not Scripts.
hmmm... interesting; I don't even have a "Scripts" folder at all in that location. Just a "Python37" folder inside which "Scripts" lives. All the more reason to find a better way. Currently I use very similar code to what you suggested but with '\\Python%d%d\\Scripts' % sys.version_info[:2] which works for me but would not work for you. May I ask which version of Python you are running and whether it is from Microsoft Store or from python.org? I am on 3.7.5 and using msi from python.org...
phd, can you please also try sinoroc's sysconfig.get_path('scripts', f'{os.name}_user') and let me know if it works for you? it worked for me on both my Windows instalaltion and my Linux. Hoping you can confirm it works for you and is thus the most 'portable' approach...
@Alexandros 3.7.7 from python.org.
0

Scripts are stored in the bin folder of python -m site --user-base, e.g. ~/.local/bin.

Modules are stored in python -m site --user-site, so something like:
~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages.

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