46

I would like to see a list of packages that depend on a certain package with PIP. That is, given django, I would like to see django-cms, django-filer, because I have these packages installed and they all have django as dependency.

linkyndy
  • 17,038
  • 20
  • 114
  • 194

5 Answers5

43

Update (2021):

Since pip version 10 you can do:

pkg=httplib2
pip show $pkg | grep ^Required-by

or for bash

pkg=httplib2
grep ^Required-by <(pip show $pkg)

so you could create an alias like:

alias pyreq='pip show $pkg | grep ^Required-by'

and querying by:

pkg=httplib2 pyreq

which should give (for ubuntu):

Required-by: lazr.restfulclient, launchpadlib

Original:

Quite straightforward:

pip show <insert_package_name_here>| grep ^Requires

Or the other way around: (sorry i got it wrong!)

for NAME in $(pip freeze | cut -d= -f1); do REQ=$(pip show $NAME| grep Requires); if [[ "$REQ" =~ "$REQUIRES" ]]; then echo $REQ;echo "Package: $NAME"; echo "---" ; fi;  done

before that set your search-string with:

REQUIRES=django

essentially you have to go through the whole list and query for every single one. That may take some time.

Edit: Also it does only work on installed packages, I don't see pip providing dependencies on not installed packages.

Don Question
  • 11,227
  • 5
  • 36
  • 54
  • 2
    You got it wrong. I would like to see what _required_ the given package, not what _requires_ the given package. – linkyndy Dec 17 '13 at 14:17
  • @DonQuestion But this only shows it for the currently installed packages right? Is there anyway to search through the whole PyPi list? – Tijme Jul 18 '17 at 16:14
  • 2
    This does not work, but returns an error: Usage: pip show [options] ... no such option: ------------------ – mikkokotila May 11 '18 at 07:38
  • 1
    leaving this for my sad self while skipping warning to run this on a deprecated python version `for NAME in $(python -W ignore -m pip freeze | cut -d= -f1); do REQ=$(python -W ignore -m pip show $NAME| grep Requires); if [[ "$REQ" =~ "$REQUIRES" ]]; then echo $REQ;echo "Package: $NAME"; echo "---" ; fi; done` – theannouncer Feb 04 '21 at 01:42
27

I know there's already an accepted answer here, but really, it seems to me that what you want is to use pipdeptree:

pip install pipdeptree
pipdeptree --help

pipdeptree -r -p django
Viktor Haag
  • 3,363
  • 1
  • 18
  • 21
  • Should be accepted answer! Reason: 1. works on the python ecosystem, more comfortable for a python developer than the answer by @Don_Question. 2. Very simplistic commands 3. Mentions CLI Tool specifically designed to solve OP's question – Hamza Zubair Jun 11 '20 at 06:22
  • You have a point here! But pipdeptree is much younger then the question. And if you need a one shot solution you really don't want to install a package, when you can do it in "one" line of shellscript! ;-) – Don Question Feb 09 '21 at 02:32
  • 3
    Just wanted to note explicitly that this (good) answer shares a limitation with accepted answer: it won't tell you about packages that aren't installed. (I came here looking for that additional functionality to troubleshoot a package that won't install on my M1 Mac.) – Paul Bissex Sep 21 '21 at 16:09
  • @PaulBissex were you able find any workaround for your case. Facing similar issue – jefe23984 Nov 17 '22 at 04:21
6

Since version 10, pip show also includes a "Required-by" entry. So just

pip show <package_name>

is enough nowadays. Or possibly

pip show <package_name> | grep ^Required-by

if you want to get just that single line for a script or whatever.

elWanderero
  • 61
  • 2
  • 4
5

This one, for pip older than 1.3.1 will list all packages and it's dependencies, you can parse its output with any scripting language, for Requires ... django inclusions:

pip freeze | cut -f 1 -d'=' |  xargs -L1 pip show

For example, following snippet:

import os
import re

package = 'numpy'
regex = re.compile('.*{}($|,).*'.format(package))

def chunks(l, n): return [l[i:i+n] for i in range(0, len(l), n)]

cmd = "pip freeze | cut -f 1 -d'=' |  xargs -L1 pip show"
packages = os.popen(cmd).read()
pkg_infos = chunks(packages.splitlines(), 5)
print '\n'.join(x[1][6:] for x in filter(lambda x: regex.match(x[-1]), pkg_infos))

outputs pandas on my system.

alko
  • 46,136
  • 12
  • 94
  • 102
2

One liner based on requirements.txt. In this example I'm looking for funcsigs reverse dependency, and found mock. Just change funcsigs by something else. 

cat requirements.txt | grep -v git | sed 's/==.*//' | xargs -I % echo 'pip show % 2>/dev/null | grep Requires | grep -q funcsigs && echo %' | sh
geckos
  • 5,687
  • 1
  • 41
  • 53