PyPI (the Python Package Index) is an awesome service that helps you find and install software developed and shared by the Python community. Almost every user-contributed Python package has been published to PyPI. You can browse the site at pypi.org but most of the time you will probably interact with it through Python’s pip tool.
You can use the pip tool to install the latest version of a module and its dependencies from the Python Packaging Index:
(env) $ python -m pip install SomePackage
There are a lot of packages on PyPI, and they’re not always up-to-date. Sometimes it helps to look at a package before installing it. Simply search for a package name on PyPI.org - for example, here’s the page for the redis package. If you follow the Homepage link, you’ll be taken to the project’s GitHub page, where you can see that the latest commit was very recently. So you know this package is actively maintained, and will probably work in your up-to-date version of Python.
When you’re first starting out, it’s a good idea to copy the pip install text from the website, otherwise bad actors could take advantage of your typos.
We’ll practice installing a package in the exercise for this chapter.