How do I install Python libraries in wheel format?

Question

I was looking for a tutorial on how to install Python libraries in the wheel format.

It does not seem straightforward so I'd appreciate a simple step by step tutorial how to install the module named "requests" for CPython.

I downloaded it from: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/requests and now I have a .whl file. I've got Python 2.7 and 3.3 on Windows, so how do I install it so all the other Python scripts I run can use it?

Answer 1

You want to install a downloaded wheel (.whl) file on Python under Windows?

1. Install pip on your Python(s) on Windows (on Python 3.4+ it is already included)

2. Upgrade pip if necessary (on the command line)

   pip install -U pip
   

3. Install a local wheel file using pip (on the command line)

   pip install --no-index --find-links=LocalPathToWheelFile PackageName
   

Option --no-index tells pip to not look on pypi.python.org (which would fail for many packages if you have no compiler installed), --find-links then tells pip where to look for instead. PackageName is the name of the package (numpy, scipy, .. first part or whole of wheel file name). For more informations see the install options of pip.

You can execute these commands in the command prompt when switching to your Scripts folder of your Python installation.

Example:

cd C:\Python27\Scripts
pip install -U pip
pip install --no-index --find-links=LocalPathToWheelFile PackageName

Note: It can still be that the package does not install on Windows because it may contain C/C++ source files which need to be compiled. You would need then to make sure a compiler is installed. Often searching for alternative pre-compiled distributions is the fastest way out.

For example numpy-1.9.2+mkl-cp27-none-win_amd64.whl has PackageName numpy.