We might work on apps that use different versions of the same libraries, so we needed a way to enable that. We could specify versions, run pip freeze > requirements.txt to output a list of installed packages to a text file, and use that same text file to install everything an app needed with pip install -r requirements.txt.īut pip didn't include a way to isolate packages from each other. pip lets us install and uninstall packages. But it came with a catch: it wasn't easy to uninstall packages that were no longer needed.Įnter pip, which most Python users are familiar with. Then came Easy Install, a package that installs other Python packages with relative ease.

We had Python, but there was no clean way to install packages. Take yourself back to the first Python iteration. To understand the problems that Pipenv solves, it's useful to show how Python package management has evolved. A brief history of Python package installation In this month's Python column, we'll fill in the gaps. But there is still confusion about what problems it solves and how it's more useful than the standard workflow using pip and a requirements.txt file. Pipenv, the 'Python Development Workflow for Humans' created by Kenneth Reitz a little more than a year ago, has become the official Python-recommended resource for managing package dependencies.