Introduction#

PDM, as described, is a modern Python package and dependency manager supporting the latest PEP standards. But it is more than a package manager. It boosts your development workflow in various aspects. The most significant benefit is it installs and manages packages in a similar way to npm that doesn't need to create a virtualenv at all!

Feature highlights#

Opt-in PEP 582 support, no virtualenv involved at all.
Simple and fast dependency resolver, mainly for large binary distributions.
A PEP 517 build backend.
PEP 621 project metadata.
Flexible and powerful plug-in system.
Versatile user scripts.
Opt-in centralized installation cache like pnpm.

Installation#

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

Note

You can still have your project working on lower Python versions, read how to do it here.

Recommended installation method#

PDM requires python version 3.7 or higher.

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

Linux/MacWindows

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pdm-project/pdm/main/install-pdm.py | python3 -

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

For security reasons, you should verify the checksum of install-pdm.py. The sha256 checksum is: f09accb8a530315be312cf9ce7af987ccb608aa90d3972968d73e7ef7d8c547b

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:

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#

HomebrewScooppipxpipinside project

1	`brew install pdm`

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

1	`pipx install pdm`

Install the head version of GitHub repository. Make sure you have installed Git LFS on your system.

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

Packaging Status#

Shell Completion#

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

BashZshFishPowershell

1	`pdm completion bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/pdm.bash-completion`

# 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

1	`pdm completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/pdm.fish`

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

Virtualenv and PEP 582#

In addition to the virtualenv management, PDM supports PEP 582 as an opt-in feature. You can learn more about the two modes in the corresponding chapters in Working with virtualenv and Working with PEP 582

PDM Eco-system#

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