Ignore certain packages and their dependencies with pip freeze

Question

Title basically says it all. How can I tell pip freeze to ignore certain packages, like pylint and pep8, and their dependencies?

Answer 1

There are few options available

Try simple ignorance

Simply do not care about these packages being present in pip output.

Delete these lines from output

Filter the output through some grep filter and have the result clean.

Use virtualenv and do not install unwanted packages into it

Note, that pip freeze in virtualenv does not report globally installed packages (however it typically reports argparse and wsgiref for me - nothing seems to be really perfect.)

Write your own pipwarm command

which would call pip freeze and modify the output as needed (removing unneeded files).

I am aware, I probably did not give you the answer you asked for, but maybe the virtualenv is close to what you need, as it allows global presence of those packages and still allow not having these packages in output of pip freeze.

Install pep8 and pylint as scripts but keep them away from pip visibility

In case, you just care about having pylint and pep8 available as command line tools, but do not require them visible to pip freeze, there are multiple options

Install pep8 and pylint into virtualenv and copy the scripts to /usr/bin

If you install pylint and pep8 into separate virtualenv, find location of the executables by which pep8 and which pylint and copy these files somewhere, where they will be visible, e.g. to /usr/bin. The scripts you copy or move from virtualenv have hardcoded path to required python packages in the virtualenv and will safely run even when copied (just the scripts, do not touch the rest of related virtualenv). Note, that there is no need to activete given virutalenv to make that working.

Install pep8 and pylint system wide but keep developing in virtualenv

System wide installed command line tools are typically installed into location, which makes them globally visible. At the same time, system wide installed packages are not seen by pip freeze when called in virtualenv.

Answer 2

My approach is the following:

1. I my .bashrc I create the following alias: alias pipfreezeignore='pip freeze | grep -vFxf ignore_requirements.txt'
2. Create the virtual environment, and install first all the packages that I do not want to keep track of (i.e. pip install jedi flake8 importmagic autopep8 yapf).
3. Immediately save them in a ignore_requirements.txt file, as in pip freeze > ignore_requirements.txt.
4. Install the rest of packages (e.g. pip install django)
5. Use pipfreezeignore > requirements.txt (in the same folder where ignore_requirements.txt is) so I just get in requirements.txt the installed packages that are not in ignore_requirements.txt

If you always want to ignore the same packages (through all your virtual environments), you might redefine the alias as in alias pipfreezeignore='pip freeze | grep -vFxf /abs/path/to/ignore_requirements.txt' Just make sure that no packages from ignore_requirements.txt are not actually necessary for your project.

Answer 3

on windows with powershell:

 $exclude = 'pylint', 'pep8'  

 pip freeze |  
             Where-Object { $exclude -notcontains $_ } |  
             ForEach-Object { pip install --upgrade $_ }

Answer 4

You can now use pip freeze --exclude <package>, which excludes the specified package from the output. See the documentation.