Python Dependency Management: Which Tool Should You Choose?

An in-depth comparison between Poetry, Pip, and Conda

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Originally published at https://mathdatasimplified.com on June 13, 2023.

Motivation

As your data science project expands, the number of dependencies also increases. To keep the project’s environment reproducible and maintainable, it’s important to use an efficient dependency management tool.

Thus, I decided to compare three popular tools for dependency management: Pip, Conda, and Poetry. After careful evaluation, I’m convinced that Poetry surpasses the other two options in terms of effectiveness and performance.

In this article, we will delve into the advantages of Poetry and highlight its key distinctions from Pip and Conda.

Available packages

Having a broad selection of packages makes it easier for developers to find the specific package and version that best suits their needs.

Conda

Some packages, like “snscrape,” cannot be installed with conda. Additionally, certain versions, such as Pandas 2.0, might not be available for installation through Conda.