Command line utility to show dependency tree of packages
Project description
pipdeptree is a command line utility for displaying the python packages installed in an virtualenv in form of a dependency tree. Since pip freeze shows all dependencies as a flat list, finding out which are the top level packages and which packages do they depend on requires some effort. It can also be tedious to resolve conflicting dependencies because pip doesn’t yet have true dependency resolution (more on this later). This utility tries to solve these problem.
To some extent, this tool is inspired by lein deps :tree command of Leiningen.
Installation
$ pip install pipdeptreeUsage and examples
To give you a brief idea, here is the output of pipdeptree compared with pip freeze:
$ pip freeze
Flask==0.10.1
Flask-Script==0.6.6
Jinja2==2.7.2
-e git+git@github.com:naiquevin/lookupy.git@cdbe30c160e1c29802df75e145ea4ad903c05386#egg=Lookupy-master
Mako==0.9.1
MarkupSafe==0.18
SQLAlchemy==0.9.1
Werkzeug==0.9.4
alembic==0.6.2
argparse==1.2.1
ipython==2.0.0
itsdangerous==0.23
psycopg2==2.5.2
redis==2.9.1
slugify==0.0.1
wsgiref==0.1.2And now see what pipdeptree outputs,
$ pipdeptree
Warning!!! Possible confusing dependencies found:
* Mako==0.9.1 -> MarkupSafe [required: >=0.9.2, installed: 0.18]
Jinja2==2.7.2 -> MarkupSafe [installed: 0.18]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lookupy==0.1
wsgiref==0.1.2
argparse==1.2.1
psycopg2==2.5.2
Flask-Script==0.6.6
- Flask [installed: 0.10.1]
- Werkzeug [required: >=0.7, installed: 0.9.4]
- Jinja2 [required: >=2.4, installed: 2.7.2]
- MarkupSafe [installed: 0.18]
- itsdangerous [required: >=0.21, installed: 0.23]
alembic==0.6.2
- SQLAlchemy [required: >=0.7.3, installed: 0.9.1]
- Mako [installed: 0.9.1]
- MarkupSafe [required: >=0.9.2, installed: 0.18]
ipython==2.0.0
slugify==0.0.1
redis==2.9.1What’s with the warning about confusing dependencies?
As seen in the above output, pipdeptree by default warns about possible confusing dependencies. Any package that’s specified as a dependency of multiple packages with a different version is considered as a possible confusing dependency. This is helpful because pip doesn’t have true dependency resolution yet. The warning is printed to stderr instead of stdout and it can be completely disabled by using the --nowarn flag.
Warnings about circular dependencies
In case any of the packages have circular dependencies (eg. package A depending upon package B and package B depending upon package A), then pipdeptree will print warnings about that as well.
$ pipdeptree
Warning!!! Cyclic dependencies found:
- CircularDependencyA => CircularDependencyB => CircularDependencyA
- CircularDependencyB => CircularDependencyA => CircularDependencyB
------------------------------------------------------------------------
wsgiref==0.1.2
argparse==1.2.1As with the confusing dependencies warnings, these are printed to stderr and can be disabled using the --nowarn flag.
Using pipdeptree to write requirements.txt file
If you wish to track only the top level packages in your requirements.txt file, it’s possible to do so using pipdeptree by grep-ing only the top-level lines from the output,
$ pipdeptree | grep -P '^\w+'
Lookupy==0.1
wsgiref==0.1.2
argparse==1.2.1
psycopg2==2.5.2
Flask-Script==0.6.6
alembic==0.6.2
ipython==2.0.0
slugify==0.0.1
redis==2.9.1There is a problem here though. The output doesn’t mention anything about Lookupy being installed as an editable package (refer to the output of pip freeze above) and information about it’s source is lost. To fix this, pipdeptree must be run with a -f or --freeze flag.
$ pipdeptree -f --nowarn | grep -P '^[\w0-9\-=.]+'
-e git+git@github.com:naiquevin/lookupy.git@cdbe30c160e1c29802df75e145ea4ad903c05386#egg=Lookupy-master
wsgiref==0.1.2
argparse==1.2.1
psycopg2==2.5.2
Flask-Script==0.6.6
alembic==0.6.2
ipython==2.0.0
slugify==0.0.1
redis==2.9.1
$ pipdeptree -f --nowarn | grep -P '^[\w0-9\-=.]+' > requirements.txtUsage
usage: pipdeptree.py [-h] [-f] [-a] [-l] [-w]
Dependency tree of the installed python packages
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-f, --freeze Print names so as to write freeze files
-a, --all list all deps at top level
-l, --local-only If in a virtualenv that has global access donot show
globally installed packages
-w, --nowarn Inhibit warnings about possibly confusing packagesKnown Issues
To work with packages installed inside a virtualenv, pipdeptree also needs to be installed in the same virtualenv even if it’s already installed globally.
One thing you might have noticed already is that flask is shown as a dependency of flask-script, which although correct, sounds a bit odd. flask-script is being used here because we are using flask and not the other way around. Same with sqlalchemy and alembic. I haven’t yet thought about a possible solution to this! (May be if libs that are “extensions” could be distinguished from the ones that are “dependencies”. Suggestions are welcome.)
Runnings Tests (for contributors)
Tests require some dummy virtualenvs to be created. If you run them using tox, then that will take care of creating the virtualenvs, so it’s recommended that you run the tests using tox for the first time.
$ pip install tox
$ toxThereafter, you may use either pytest or nose to run them.
However, before pushing the code or sending pull requests it’s recommended to run tox once so that tests are run on all environments.
License
MIT (See LICENSE)
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