["python","module","pip"]
How do I get a list of locally installed Python modules?

How do I get a list of Python modules installed on my computer?
Solution Do not use with pip > 10.0! My 50 cents for getting a pip freeze-like list from a Python script: import pip installed_packages = pip.get_installed_distributions() installed_packages_list = sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version) for i in installed_packages]) print(installed_packages_list) As a (too long) one liner: sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version) for i in pip.get_installed_distributions()]) Giving: ['behave==1.2.4', 'enum34==1.0', 'flask==0.10.1', 'itsdangerous==0.24', 'jinja2==2.7.2', 'jsonschema==2.3.0', 'markupsafe==0.23', 'nose==1.3.3', 'parse-type==0.3.4', 'parse==1.6.4', 'prettytable==0.7.2', 'requests==2.3.0', 'six==1.6.1', 'vioozer-metadata==0.1', 'vioozer-users-server==0.1', 'werkzeug==0.9.4'] Scope This solution applies to the system scope or to a virtual environment scope, and covers packages installed by setuptools, pip and (god forbid) easy_install. My use case I added the result of this call to my Flask server, so when I call it with http://example.com/exampleServer/environment I get the list of packages installed on the server's virtualenv. It makes debugging a whole lot easier. Caveats I have noticed a strange behaviour of this technique - when the Python interpreter is invoked in the same directory as a setup.py file, it does not list the package installed by setup.py. Steps to reproduce: Create a virtual environment $ cd /tmp $ virtualenv test_env New python executable in test_env/bin/python Installing setuptools, pip...done. $ source test_env/bin/activate (test_env) $ Clone a Git repository with setup.py (test_env) $ git clone https://github.com/behave/behave.git Cloning into 'behave'... remote: Reusing existing pack: 4350, done. remote: Total 4350 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0) Receiving objects: 100% (4350/4350), 1.85 MiB | 418.00 KiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (2388/2388), done. Checking connectivity... done. We have behave's setup.py in /tmp/behave: (test_env) $ ls /tmp/behave/setup.py /tmp/behave/setup.py Install the Python package from the Git repository (test_env) $ cd /tmp/behave && pip install . running install ... Installed /private/tmp/test_env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/enum34-1.0-py2.7.egg Finished processing dependencies for behave==1.2.5a1 If we run the aforementioned solution from /tmp >>> import pip >>> sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version) for i in pip.get_installed_distributions()]) ['behave==1.2.5a1', 'enum34==1.0', 'parse-type==0.3.4', 'parse==1.6.4', 'six==1.6.1'] >>> import os >>> os.getcwd() '/private/tmp' If we run the aforementioned solution from /tmp/behave >>> import pip >>> sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version) for i in pip.get_installed_distributions()]) ['enum34==1.0', 'parse-type==0.3.4', 'parse==1.6.4', 'six==1.6.1'] >>> import os >>> os.getcwd() '/private/tmp/behave' behave==1.2.5a1 is missing from the second example, because the working directory contains behave's setup.py file. I could not find any reference to this issue in the documentation. Perhaps I shall open a bug for it.