How to create a standalone pip package (all deps included)

Question

What's the best way to create a standalone pip package, that would run on any machine with bare package installed?

Say, I want to package pelican so that it'll run at all computers with python installed (assume for a moment that all dependencies are pure python).

Answer 1

There are two solutions in my mind: bundles and pip install --no-install trick.

Using bundles:

$ virtualenv venv
$ venv/bin/pip install pelican
$ venv/bin/pip freeze > all-packages.txt
$ venv/bin/pip bundle allpackages.pybundle -r all-packages.txt

(I created venv to have a clean environment and all-packages.txt contain only what pelican needs)

And you just need to distribute allpackages.pybundle, and who wants those packages that must do:

$ venv/bin/pip install allpackages.pybundle -r all-packages.txt

---

Using pip install --no-install:

pip can download all packages to a directory, and you can distribute those packages. Assuming you have all-packages.txt containing all the packages you need to distribute, you can use the --no-install with --download-dir options:

$ mkdir tarballs
$ venv/bin/pip install --no-install --download-dir=tarballs -r all-packages.txt

If you use the last trick and wants to install those packages using pip:

$ venv/bin/pip install --no-deps --no-index tarballs/*

The option no-deps is needed because pip looks for dependencies before installing the wnated package. I used --no-index just to show you pip does not needs to go to PyPI to find anything, and you don't even need internet connection in that step.