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Introduction#

PDM is a modern Python package manager with PEP 582 support. It installs and manages packages in a similar way to npm that doesn't need to create a virtualenv at all!

Feature highlights#

  • PEP 582 local package installer and runner, no virtualenv involved at all.
  • Simple and relatively fast dependency resolver, mainly for large binary distributions.
  • A PEP 517 build backend.
  • PEP 621 project metadata.

Installation#

PDM requires Python 3.7+ to be installed. It works on multiple platforms including Windows, Linux and MacOS.

Note

There is no restriction about what Python version your project is using, but installing PDM itself needs Python 3.7+.

PDM requires python version 3.7 or higher.

Like Pip, PDM provides an installation script that will install PDM into an isolated environment.

For Linux/Mac

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curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pdm-project/pdm/main/install-pdm.py | python -

For Windows

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(Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pdm-project/pdm/main/install-pdm.py -UseBasicParsing).Content | python -

The installer will install PDM into the user site and the location depends on the system:

  • $HOME/.local/bin for Unix
  • %APPDATA%\Python\Scripts on Windows

You can pass additional options to the script to control how PDM is installed:

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usage: install-pdm.py [-h] [-v VERSION] [--prerelease] [--remove] [-p PATH] [-d DEP]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v VERSION, --version VERSION | envvar: PDM_VERSION
                        Specify the version to be installed, or HEAD to install from the main branch
  --prerelease | envvar: PDM_PRERELEASE    Allow prereleases to be installed
  --remove | envvar: PDM_REMOVE            Remove the PDM installation
  -p PATH, --path PATH | envvar: PDM_HOME  Specify the location to install PDM
  -d DEP, --dep DEP | envvar: PDM_DEPS     Specify additional dependencies, can be given multiple times

You can either pass the options after the script or set the env var value.

Other installation methods#

If your are on MacOS and using homebrew, install it by:

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$ brew install pdm

If you are on Windows and using Scoop, install it by:

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PS> scoop bucket add frostming https://github.com/frostming/scoop-frostming.git
PS> scoop install pdm

Otherwise, to avoid messing up with the system Python environment, the most recommended way to install PDM is via pipx:

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$ pipx install pdm

Or you can install PDM into the user site with pip:

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$ pip install --user pdm

Install the head version of GitHub repository:

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$ pipx install git+https://github.com/pdm-project/[email protected]#egg=pdm

Make sure you have installed Git LFS on your system.

Enable PEP 582 globally#

To make the Python interpreters aware of PEP 582 packages, one need to add the pdm/pep582/sitecustomize.py to the Python library search path.

For Windows users#

One just needs to execute pdm --pep582, then environment variable will be changed automatically. Don't forget to restart the terminal session to take effect.

For Mac and Linux users#

The command to change the environment variables can be produced by pdm --pep582 [<SHELL>]. If <SHELL> isn't given, PDM will pick one based on some guesses.

You may want to write a line in your .bash_profile(or similar profiles) to make it effective when login. For example, in bash you can do this:

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$ pdm --pep582 >> ~/.bash_profile

Once again, Don't forget to restart the terminal session to take effect.

Use the docker image#

PDM also provides a docker image to ease your deployment flow, to use it, write a Dockerfile with following content:

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FROM frostming/pdm

COPY . /app

# -- Replace with the correct path to your app's main executable
CMD ["pdm", "run", "python", "main.py"]

Shell Completion#

PDM supports generating completion scripts for Bash, Zsh, Fish or Powershell. Here are some common locations for each shell:

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# Bash
$ pdm completion bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/pdm.bash-completion

# Zsh
# Make sure ~/.zfunc is added to fpath, before compinit.
$ pdm completion zsh > ~/.zfunc/_pdm

# Oh-My-Zsh
$ mkdir $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/pdm
$ pdm completion zsh > $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/pdm/_pdm
# Then make sure pdm plugin is enabled in ~/.zshrc

# Fish
$ pdm completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/pdm.fish

# Powershell
# Create a directory to store completion scripts
PS > mkdir $PROFILE\..\Completions
PS > echo @'
Get-ChildItem "$PROFILE\..\Completions\" | ForEach-Object {
    . $_.FullName
}
'@ | Out-File -Append -Encoding utf8 $PROFILE
# Generate script
PS > Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Scope CurrentUser
PS > pdm completion powershell | Out-File -Encoding utf8 $PROFILE\..\Completions\pdm_completion.ps1

Unicode and ANSI supports#

PDM provides a fancy terminal UI with the help of ANSI characters and unicode emojis. It can turn on/off automatically depending on whether it is supported on your terminal. However, if you see any garbled characters, set env var DISABLE_UNICODE_OUTPUT=1 to turn off it.

Use with IDE#

Now there are not built-in support or plugins for PEP 582 in most IDEs, you have to configure your tools manually.

PDM will write and store project-wide configurations in .pdm.toml and you are recommended to add following lines in the .gitignore:

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.pdm.toml
__pypackages__/

PyCharm#

Mark __pypackages__/<major.minor>/lib as Sources Root.

Additionally, if you want to use tools from the environment (e.g. pytest), you have to add the __pypackages__/<major.minor>/bin directory to the PATH variable in the corresponding run/debug configuration.

VSCode#

Add the following to .vscode/settings.json:

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{
  ...
  "python.autoComplete.extraPaths": ["__pypackages__/<major.minor>/lib"],
  "python.analysis.extraPaths": ["__pypackages__/<major.minor>/lib"]
}

Enable PEP582 globally, and make sure VSCode runs using the same user and shell you enabled PEP582 for.

Cannot enable PEP582 globally?

If for some reason you cannot enable PEP582 globally, you can still configure each "launch" in each project: set the PYTHONPATH environment variable in your launch configuration, in .vscode/launch.json. For example, to debug your pytest run:

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{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "pytest",
            "type": "python",
            "request": "launch",
            "module": "pytest",
            "args": ["tests"],
            "justMyCode": false,
            "env": {"PYTHONPATH": "__pypackages__/<major.minor>/lib"}
        }
    ]
}

If your package resides in a src directory, add it to PYTHONPATH as well:

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"env": {"PYTHONPATH": "src:__pypackages__/<major.minor>/lib"}

Task Provider#

In addition, there is a VSCode Task Provider extension available for download.

This makes it possible for VSCode to automatically detect pdm scripts so they can be run natively as VSCode Tasks.

Seek for other IDEs or editors#

PDM Eco-system#

Awesome PDM is a curated list of awesome PDM plugins and resources.