website/content/blog/offlinepip.md

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---
title: "Offline Pip Packages"
date: 2020-01-20T23:11:05-05:00
draft: false
tags: [ "Python", "Archive" ]
---
There are a few reasons I can think of to have offline pip packages:
- A package isn't able to compile on a friend's computer since they don't have the million linear algebra libraries that `numpy` /`scipy` require.
- You want to archive everything to run a piece of software
- You want to control the packages available to a closed network
Regardless, to my surprise, setting up a repository of python wheels doesn't take many steps.
## Setup
First I would recommend that you setup a virtual environment. Either through [pyenv](/blog/pyenv/) or [python-virtualenv](/blog/virtualenv/).
Then, install whatever packages you would like. Let us use tensorflow as an example:
```bash
pip install tensorflow
```
We're going to need the packages `pip-chill` and `pip-tools` for the next couple steps
```bash
pip install pip-chill pip-tools
```
After you install all the packages you want to be available, freeze the requirements that aren't dependencies to a text file
```bash
pip-chill --no-version > requirements.in
```
We will then use `pip-compile` in `pip-tools` to resolve our dependencies and make our packages as fresh as possible.
```bash
pip-compile requirements.in
```
To sync the current virtual environment with the `requirements.txt` file that gets produced
```bash
pip-sync
```
Now we have a fully working and resolved environment.
From here, we need to install the wheel package to make the binary wheels.
```bash
pip install wheel
```
Then to create the wheels,
```bash
pip wheel --wheel-dir=wheels -r requirements.txt
```
With this you have a whole repository of wheels under the wheels folder!
## Client Side
Now you can get [all fancy with your deployment](https://realpython.com/offline-python-deployments-with-docker/#deploy), though I just assumed that the files were mounted in some shared folder.
The client can install all the wheels
```bash
pip install /path/to/wheels/*
```
Or they can just install the packages they want
```bash
pip install --no-index -f /path/to/wheels/wheels package_name
```
If you don't want to add flags to every command, check out my post on using [configuration files with pip](/blog/pipconf/).