Mastering Pip: Essential for Data Scientists and Python Developers

4 min readOct 14, 2023

Ever wondered how Python developers and data scientists effortlessly manage all those cool packages they use in their projects? Well, it’s all thanks to Pip, the magical tool that makes it happen. In this blog, we’re going to demystify Pip, showing you how it’s essential for both data scientists and Python developers. By the end, you’ll know how to use Pip to make your Python projects run smoothly, whether you’re crunching numbers or creating software.

What is pip ?

When you install Python, you receive the standard distribution of the language, which includes built-in modules, packages, and libraries. However, Python has a vast and ever-growing community, making it impractical to include all available packages in the standard distribution due to the potential increase in its size. To address this, Python provides a handy tool called Pip, short for “Package Installer for Python.”

With Pip, you can easily install the specific packages you need for your projects. In essence, Pip serves as Python’s package manager, simplifying the process of adding new functionality to your Python environment.

Checking pip is installed or not ?

# In command line type
pip --version

In the diagram above, you can observe that the version of Pip is displayed, and its location is within the ‘site-packages’ folder.

Updating the pip :-

pip install --upgrade pip

How to get help from pip ?

pip help

Here a question arise when we use Pip to install packages, where do these packages originate from?

Installing Packages from Online repo :

When you install packages using Pip, they are typically sourced from the default Python Package Index (PyPI). However, if you wish to install a package from a GitHub repository, you need to specify the GitHub URL in the installation command.

How to Determine Which Libraries Are Installed on Your System ?

pip list

When you use ‘pip install requests,’ the default behavior is to install the latest version. However, if you require a specific version, you can specify it by using ‘pip install requests==2.28.1’ in the installation command.

Installing packages from offline sources :

Installing multiple packages using a requirements file :

Suppose you have four developers working on separate modules, each of which relies on libraries like numpy, pandas, matplotlib, and requests.

To avoid potential runtime problems arising from the use of different library versions, you create a requirements.txt file. In this file, you list the necessary libraries and their specific versions. For example, your requirements.txt file might look like this:

numpy==1.19.5
pandas==1.3.3
matplotlib==3.4.2
requests==2.28.1

You then share this requirements file with all developers, ensuring that they can install the required packages consistently by using the following command:

pip install -r requirements.txt

This way, you maintain version consistency and reduce the likelihood of compatibility issues in your project.

How to Verify the Installation of Packages Installed Using a requirements.txt File ?

pip freeze

Upgrading a package :

pip install --upgrade <package name>

pip show command :

When you install a package in Python, it typically comes with all the dependencies it relies on for proper functioning. To identify the dependencies of a specific package, you can utilize the following command :