What does pip install mean?

Question

I am installing this https://github.com/wkentaro/pytorch-fcn. It tells me to do this instruction.

git clone https://github.com/wkentaro/pytorch-fcn.git
cd pytorch-fcn
pip install .

What does pip install . mean ? Which folder or file am i running by just typing dot ? setup.py ?

As a more general answer, . in both Unix and Windows means "the current directory". — chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic-, Aug 21 '18 at 07:32
pip displays a page of help text, which tells you that pip install --help will give you help text specific to pip install. — Roger Lipscombe, Aug 21 '18 at 09:15

AmeyaVS · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-21T05:33:12.467

10

Basically you are specifying the location from which the pip package manager to extract the package information from.
E.g.:

# Get the Source code
git clone https://github.com/wkentaro/pytorch-fcn.git

# Change into the cloned git repository:pytorch-fcn
cd pytorch-fcn

# Install the package definitions from current location i.e. pytorch-fcn.
pip install .

Here is a brief description: pip executes the setup.py which loads the requirements.txt which has textual representation of the dependency packages.

References:

Available here is the official documentation of pip.
For better python development workflow refer here for why you should use pip and virtualenv.

edited Aug 21 '18 at 05:33

answered Aug 21 '18 at 05:12

AmeyaVS

536

Hello thanks for the reply. I have only used pip to do installations and have no idea how it works. What do you mean by package definitions ? Is there a specific file in pytorch-fcn that pip executes ? – Kong Aug 21 '18 at 05:20
@kong updated the answer. – AmeyaVS Aug 21 '18 at 05:35

What does pip install mean?

1 Answers1