Caching#
New in version 6.0.
pip provides an on-by-default caching, designed to reduce the amount of time spent on duplicate downloads and builds.
What is cached#
HTTP responses#
This cache functions like a web browser cache.
When making any HTTP request, pip will first check its local cache to determine if it has a suitable response stored for that request which has not expired. If it does then it returns that response and doesn’t re-download the content.
If it has a response stored but it has expired, then it will attempt to make a conditional request to refresh the cache which will either return an empty response telling pip to simply use the cached item (and refresh the expiration timer) or it will return a whole new response which pip can then store in the cache.
While this cache attempts to minimize network activity, it does not prevent network access altogether. If you want a local install solution that circumvents accessing PyPI, see Installing from local packages.
Changed in version 23.3: A new cache format is now used, stored in a directory called http-v2 (see
below for this directory’s location). Previously this cache was stored in a
directory called http in the main cache directory. If you have completely
switched to newer versions of pip, you may wish to delete the old directory.
Locally built wheels#
pip attempts to use wheels from its local wheel cache whenever possible.
This means that if there is a cached wheel for the same version of a specific package name, pip will use that wheel instead of rebuilding the project.
When no wheels are found for a source distribution, pip will attempt to build a wheel using the package’s build system. If the build is successful, this wheel is added to the cache and used in subsequent installs for the same package version.
Wheels built from source distributions provided to pip as a direct path (such
as pip install .) are not cached across runs, though they may be reused within
the same pip execution.
Changed in version 20.0: pip now caches wheels when building from an immutable Git reference (i.e. a commit hash).
Where is the cache stored#
Caution
The exact filesystem structure of pip’s cache’s contents is considered to be an implementation detail and may change between any two versions of pip.
pip cache dir#
New in version 20.1.
You can use pip cache dir to get the cache directory that pip is currently configured to use.
Default paths#
~/.cache/pip
pip will also respect XDG_CACHE_HOME.
~/Library/Caches/pip
%LocalAppData%\pip\Cache
Avoiding caching#
pip tries to use its cache whenever possible, and it is designed do the right thing by default.
In some cases, pip’s caching behaviour can be undesirable. As an example, if you have package with optional C extensions, that generates a pure Python wheel when the C extension can’t be built, pip will use that cached wheel even when you later invoke it from an environment that could have built those optional C extensions. This is because pip is seeing a cached wheel that matches the package being built, and pip assumes that the result of building a package from a package index is deterministic.
The recommended approach for dealing with these situations is to directly install from a source distribution instead of letting pip auto-discover the package when it is trying to install. Installing directly from a source distribution will make pip build a wheel, regardless of whether there is a matching cached wheel. This usually means doing something like:
$ python -m pip download sampleproject==1.0.0 --no-binary :all:
$ python -m pip install sampleproject-1.0.0.tar.gz
$ python -m pip download sampleproject==1.0.0 --no-binary :all:
$ python -m pip install sampleproject-1.0.0.tar.gz
C:> py -m pip download sampleproject==1.0.0 --no-binary :all:
C:> py -m pip install sampleproject-1.0.0.tar.gz
It is also a good idea to remove the offending cached wheel using the pip cache command.
Cache management#
The pip cache command can be used to manage pip’s cache.
General overview#
pip cache info provides an overview of the contents of pip’s cache, such as the total size and location of various parts of it.
Removing a single package#
pip cache remove setuptools removes all wheel files related to setuptools from pip’s cache. HTTP cache files are not removed at this time.
Removing the cache#
pip cache purge will clear all files from pip’s wheel and HTTP caches.
Listing cached files#
pip cache list will list all wheel files from pip’s cache.
pip cache list setuptools will list all setuptools-related wheel files from pip’s cache.
Disabling caching#
pip’s caching behaviour is disabled by passing the --no-cache-dir option.
It is, however, recommended to NOT disable pip’s caching unless you have caching at a higher level (eg: layered caches in container builds). Doing so can significantly slow down pip (due to repeated operations and package builds) and result in significantly more network usage.