Using pip on Pythonista

[Tasilee]

I am a newbie to python and Pythonista so please take it easy on me. I need to use pip to install 3rd party libraries/modules.

“Pip” isn’t recognized, so I have read postings on this such as https://gist.github.com/boozook/d693415ac0ec0291181241ae733ebc75, using StaSh and ensurepip, and it doesn’t make sense to me.

Surely pip should be a standard part of the Pythonista environment?

Can the community help with a simple solution, or correct my stupidity?

Thanks

[qqfunc]

I'm using Pythonista 3 pip configuration tool.

Installation:

import requests as r; exec(r.get('https://tinyurl.com/Setup-pipTerminal').content)

To launch the pip terminal, execute pipTerminal.py in "This iPhone / iPad".

This tool cannot install packages that meet the following conditions.

• Only have a source distribution, such as a .tar.gz file: This tool requires build distributions with wheel format .whl.
• Using C extension modules: C extensions are not allowed on iOS.

To check if a package is available, do the following:

1. Search the package in PyPI.
2. Click "Download files" in the left menu.
3. Make sure the package includes a build distribution named <Package Name>-<Version>-py3-none-any.whl.

To update pip itself, simply run the command:

pip install -U pip

The command recommended by the pip's warning is unavailable in Pythonista.

[o-murphy]

There can be problem if some package have dependency that have no wheel. then we'll got error that iOS not supports subprocessing

[qqfunc]

I see, I certainly didn't check the dependencies. Also, subprocessing would never be available on iOS.

[o-murphy]

I see, I certainly didn't check the dependencies. Also, subprocessing would never be available on iOS.

Actually if some sdist distribution or sdist based dependency does not require building binaries recurcive deps installation works with --no-build-isolation flag

[o-murphy]

I see, I certainly didn't check the dependencies. Also, subprocessing would never be available on iOS.

Btw, I still recommend you to use stash instead, cause it gives much more native shell and understanding about how Pythonista file tree looks like, for now you can use the version from this PR which is not complete but compatible with pythonista 3.4..3.5. While I working on this PR i got a lot of understanding about how pip works in Pythonista environment, so the features I used for stash to resolve problems with pip was also contributed to pipTerminal.
Other side why stash can be more acceptable is cause it supports monkeypatching and it has subprocess emulation on earlier Pythonista versions, and I think it possibly can be ported to the future versions.

[qqfunc]

That's interesting. I will try the new StaSH when the PR is merged.

Actually I'm not familiar with the detailed mechanism of Python packaging, so I'm going to learn it from source code of StaSH, etc. someday.

[Tasilee]

Wonderful! It all works. Appreciated @qqfunc

[Tasilee]

Small issue, which I assume is due to initialization scripts (?) - the next time I opened Pythonista (which I do love BTW), pip is unknown (again).

[qqfunc]

Could you please provide more details about "pip is unknown"? (I'm not very knowledgeable about mechanics of Pythonista either, so I'm not sure if I can offer any advice.)

[o-murphy]

Small issue, which I assume is due to initialization scripts (?) - the next time I opened Pythonista (which I do love BTW), pip is unknown (again).

It happen cause getpip script installs pip into home dir instead of site-packages and also it can't install it to site-packages cause pip is already there are on pythonista 3.4..3.5, it can be fixed with --target flag, but it is not yet complete sollution

[qqfunc]

I think @Tasilee is newly creating answers every time instead of replying; this is the problem mentioned here.

[Tasilee]

I think the issue is that the Pythonista ‘Console’ is not equivalent to a Terminal in Python. If I enter “pip” into the Console prompt, I get the following, which is being interpreted as Python code. From what I can see, this is where StaSh can be used as a shell terminal environment?

Pip seems to be installed in “site-packages (user)”, so it is there, but how does one access it? I did run pip ok after that installation line you provided above.

[qqfunc]

I see. Thank you for the explanation.

The Console feature in Pythonista is an interface to the interactive shell, which is commonly referred to as a REPL in programming languages.

In the interactive shell, we can execute any Python code. On the other hand, pip should be run as a shell command, not as Python code.

In PC environments, the pip command is executed in any shell software, as well as the python command. However, iOS apps are not allowed to use command-line features.

To work around this, some Pythonista tools emulate a command-line shell using Python itself. StaSH and the above pip configuration tool are similar in that they both emulate a shell program using Python.

That said, since these shell environments are Python programs, they terminate when the app is closed. Therefore, just as the previous Python program is not being executed when the application launches, neither is the shell.

To use the pip command, you need to restart the shell program by running launch_stash.py or pipTerminal.py.

By the way, StaSH and the pip configuration tool each use different implementations of pip. StaSH seems to use an original pip program that is suited for execution on Pythonista. The pip configuration tool uses the official pip program.

I introduced the pip configuration tool because it's simple and appears to have fewer bugs than StaSH. StaSH is powerful and feature-rich, but due to its complexity, it can be more prone to bugs, especially in the absence of active maintenance.

[Tasilee]

Thanks heaps @qqfunc ! That is a lucid explanation of the issue. Very greatly appreciated. Your explanation should be a standard part of the Welcome.md text as reckon that I won’t be alone on this issue. while I have run Python on a PC, this is my first go at using the IOS environment, as I wanted a very portable iPad anywhere opton.

PipTerminal.py (which I had spotted but was a tad scared to run) - yep, perfect!

[o-murphy]

I think there possibly should be uv instead of pip

[o-murphy]

I'm using Pythonista 3 pip configuration tool.

Installation:

import requests as r; exec(r.get('https://tinyurl.com/Setup-pipTerminal').content)

To launch the pip terminal, execute pipTerminal.py in "This iPhone / iPad".

This tool cannot install packages that meet the following conditions.

• Only have a source distribution, such as a .tar.gz file: This tool requires build distributions with wheel format .whl.

• Using C extension modules: C extensions are not allowed on iOS.

To check if a package is available, do the following:

1. Search the package in PyPI.

2. Click "Download files" in the left menu.

3. Make sure the package includes a build distribution named <Package Name>-<Version>-py3-none-any.whl.

To update pip itself, simply run the command:

pip install -U pip

The command recommended by the pip's warning is unavailable in Pythonista.

pipTerminal does not work on pythonista 3.5

[o-murphy]

You could try the --target option to get around the permissions issue:

pip install --target=/private/var/mobile/Containers/Shared/AppGroup/0ABE81E6-1D09-41C3-88A2-AA7864F9D789/Pythonista3/Documents/site-packages pip

When pipTerminal is using there pip.conf specified and pip.conf can't be combined with --target option, yes we can remove pip.conf and then use --target and then get pip.conf back but it's strange thing
Btw I don't sure how pythonista will resolve path for import when pip will be installed twice (built-in and user), cause there is no option to remove built-in pip

[o-murphy]

@RichardPotthoff @qqfunc

Looks like --target with no pip.conf works, so I will try to update pipTerminal to predefine --target instead of pip.conf

[RichardPotthoff]

I am pretty sure Pythonista just uses the module that it finds first following sys.path. This means it will use the pip in site-packages(user), because it comes first:

print('\n'.join(sys.path))
/private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/77881549-3FA6-4E4B-803F-D53B172FC865/Documents
/private/var/mobile/Containers/Shared/AppGroup/0ABE81E6-1D09-41C3-88A2-AA7864F9D789/Pythonista3/Documents/site-packages-3
/private/var/mobile/Containers/Shared/AppGroup/0ABE81E6-1D09-41C3-88A2-AA7864F9D789/Pythonista3/Documents/site-packages
/var/containers/Bundle/Application/508A7160-E8FF-41BE-BDB6-96FAD245BE04/Pythonista3.app/Frameworks/Py3Kit.framework/pylib
/var/containers/Bundle/Application/508A7160-E8FF-41BE-BDB6-96FAD245BE04/Pythonista3.app/Frameworks/Py3Kit.framework/pylib/site-packages
/var/containers/Bundle/Application/508A7160-E8FF-41BE-BDB6-96FAD245BE04/Pythonista3.app/Frameworks/Py3Kit.framework/pylib/site-packages/pythonista
/var/containers/Bundle/Application/508A7160-E8FF-41BE-BDB6-96FAD245BE04/Pythonista3.app/Frameworks/Py3Kit.framework/pylib/site-packages/PIL_compat

This is for Pythonista 3.4. I don't have Pythonista 3.5.

[o-murphy]

I am pretty sure Pythonista just uses the module that it finds first following sys.path. This means it will use the pip in site-packages(user), because it comes first:

@RichardPotthoff @qqfunc

Try this on pythonista 3.4 (on 3.5 works like charm)
It overrides --target if it is not provided to ~/Documents/site-packages

import requests as r; exec(r.get('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/o-murphy/Pythonista3_pip_Configration_Tool/main/Setup-pipTerminal2.py').content)

It allows install new packages versions that already in built-in to user

pip install pip  # install pip to site-packages (user)
pip install <some-package>  # will be installed to `~/Documents/site-packages`
pip uninstall <some-package>  # will be uninstalled from `~/Documents/site-packages`

[RichardPotthoff]

I already have pip 25.2 installed on Pythonista 3.4, and I have my own little pip_sh.py command line interface.
It works for me.
Edit:
I have added comments/help/istructions to my pip_sh.py script. I do not know if it is of much use for Pythonista 3.5, but it may still be useful for Pythonista 3.4. Some of it may be useful for tools that need to be backward compatible. E.g. here is the code I use to determine the path of the "site-packages(user)" directory:

try:
  import PIP_TARGET
except ImportError:
  print('Module "PIP_TARGET.py" missing in "site-packages(user)"!\n\n'
        'Add an empty file named "PIP_TARGET.py" to "site-packages(user)". \n'
        'This file acts as a tag that marks the target directory for the\n'
        'commands "pip" and "clone".',file=sys.stderr)
  sys.exit(1)
  
pip_packages_path=os.path.dirname(PIP_TARGET.__file__)
os.environ['PIP_TARGET']=pip_packages_path

The script also allows to "clone" installed packages from shared drives into Pythonista's "site-packages(user)", which is useful for pure Python packages that involve a "build" step, which can cause "sub processes not supported (ios)" errors.
I have a "Pythonista" virtual environment with Python 3.10.4 on my RaspberryPi for this purpose. I use a samba service to share the Pythonista directory, and use iOS's "Files > (...) > Connect to Server " to connect to it.

[o-murphy]

Merged CrossDarkrix/Pythonista3_pip_Configration_Tool#1 (comment)

[o-murphy]

StaSh for pythonista 3.4..3.5 WIP PR (with common pip support)

Install to test using this command

import requests as r; exec(r.get('https://gist.githubusercontent.com/o-murphy/ad7bcee38551d24ec172032792a2bf8f/raw/158346c958601cc29a9cc8070d6e501111562e52/get-stash-py3.10-beta.py').content)