callable-pip provides a drop-in replacement for pip.main() and support
for monkey-patching pip.main via a known-dangerous method.
pip.main() has never been a publicly supported API for pip, but it has
often been used as such. This tiny package is meant to cover the gap and ease
people's transitions to new usage.
This usage is always guaranteed to work on any supported python version with
any functioning version of pip.
Instead of pip.main(...), use this method instead:
import callable_pip
callable_pip.main('install', '--upgrade', 'setuptools')
If you are writing a python program, you can just use callable_pip.main()
yourself. This is the only guaranteed-safe usage.
callable-pip provides a patch which adds pip.main() back to pip,
but which is dangerous and known not to work on some versions of pip:
import callable_pip
callable_pip.dangerous_patch()
...
import pip
pip.main('--version') # actually invokes callable_pip.main()
If you have dependencies which use pip.main, you can call
callable_pip.dangerous_patch() yourself and it will usually work.
dangerous_patch is so-named because it is not guaranteed to work on all
pip versions and it is dangerous. Avoid it when possible.
You may be a consumer of packages which use pip.main() in a context where
you cannot modify or do not own any of the source.
These techniques may help you.
More details on sitecustomize.py and .pth files can be found in the
Python documentation:
https://docs.python.org/3/library/site.html
Remember to remove these patches if you uninstall callable_pip, or Python
will fail to start.
sitecustomize.py can exist anywhere in the PYTHONPATH, including the
directory where python is invoked.
Add a sitecustomize.py with the following content, or append it to an
existing sitecustomize.py:
import callable_pip callable_pip.dangerous_patch()
The .pth file can have any name you want, but must be installed in the
site-packages directory. It may therefore require root or other elevated
privileges to add.
Add a file, e.g. callable_pip.pth, with the following content:
import callable_pip; callable_pip.dangerous_patch()
All documentation is in this readme doc.
Submit all bug reports and issues here: https://github.com/sirosen/callable-pip/issues