The Python Package Index, abbreviated as PyPI () and also known as the Cheese Shop (a reference to the ''

Monty Python's Flying Circus ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' (also known as simply ''Monty Python'') is a British surreal humour, surreal sketch comedy series created by and starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam, w ...

'' sketch " Cheese Shop"), is the official third-party

software repository A software repository, or repo for short, is a storage location for Package format, software packages. Often a table of contents is also stored, along with metadata. A software repository is typically managed by source or version control, or rep ...

for Python. It is analogous to the

CPAN The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) is a software repository of over 220,000 software modules and accompanying documentation for 45,500 distributions, written in the Perl programming language by over 14,500 contributors. ''CPAN'' can de ...

repository for

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

and to the CRAN repository for R. PyPI is run by the

Python Software Foundation The Python Software Foundation (PSF) is an American nonprofit organization devoted to the Python programming language, launched on March 6, 2001. The mission of the foundation is to foster development of the Python community and is responsible fo ...

, a charity. Some package managers, including pip, use PyPI as the default source for packages and their dependencies. more than 530,000 Python packages are available. PyPI primarily hosts Python packages in the form of source archives, called "sdists", or of "wheels" that may contain binary modules from a compiled language. PyPI as an index allows users to search for packages by keywords or by

filters Filtration is a physical process that separates solid matter and fluid from a mixture. Filter, filtering, filters or filtration may also refer to: Science and technology Computing * Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming * Fil ...

against their

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

, such as

free software license A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder (usually the author) ...

or compatibility with

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX; ) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines application programming interfaces (APIs), along with comm ...

. A single entry on PyPI is able to store, aside from just a package and its metadata, previous releases of the package, precompiled wheels (e.g. containing DLLs on Windows), as well as different forms for different

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

and Python versions.

History

The ''Python Distribution Utilities'' (') Python module was first added to the Python standard library in the 1.6.1 release, in September 2000, and in the 2.0 release, in October 2000, nine years after the first Python release in February 1991, with the goal of simplifying the process of installing

third-party Third party may refer to: Business * Third-party source, a supplier company not owned by the buyer or seller * Third-party beneficiary, a person who could sue on a contract, despite not being an active party * Third-party insurance, such as a veh ...

Python packages. However, ' only provided the tools for packaging Python

code In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communicati ...

, and no more. It was able to collect and distribute

but did not use it for other purposes. Python still lacked a centralised catalog for packages on the internet. PEP 241, a proposal to standardize metadata for indexes, was finalized in March 2001. A proposal to create a comprehensive centralised catalog, hosted at the python.org domain, was later finalized in November 2002. On 16 April 2018, all PyPI traffic began being served by a more modern website platform: Warehouse. The legacy website was turned off at the end of that month. All existing packages were migrated to the new platform with their histories preserved. In May 2023 the Python Software Foundation reported that the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a United States federal executive departments, federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of Law of the Unite ...

had

subpoena A subpoena (; also subpœna, supenna or subpena) or witness summons is a writ issued by a government agency, most often a court, to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of ...

ed the user data of five PyPI contributors. A representative of the organization further explained that they expect privacy for contributors, but they also comply with the law and court orders, and for this reason turned over the data which the government requested.

Notes

References

{{reflist , colwidth=33em , refs= {{cite web, url=http://www.python.org/~jeremy/weblog/030924.html, title=Python Package Index Tutorial, last=Hylton, first=Jeremy, publisher=Jeremy Hylton, date=24 September 2003, access-date=22 April 2012, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120521221310/http://www.python.org/~jeremy/weblog/030924.html, archive-date=21 May 2012, url-status=dead {{cite web, url=http://pypi.python.org/mirrors, title=PyPI mirrors, work=Python Package Index, publisher=

, access-date=22 April 2012, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120503003036/http://pypi.python.org/mirrors, archive-date=3 May 2012, url-status=dead {{cite web, url=http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/usage.html, title=Usage, work=pip 1.1.post1 documentation, publisher=The pip developers, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120502155303/http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/usage.html, archive-date=2 May 2012, url-status=dead {{cite web, url=http://python.org/download/releases/1.6.1/, title=Python 1.6.1, publisher=

, access-date=24 April 2012 {{cite web, url=https://docs.python.org/2/whatsnew/2.0.html, title=What's New in Python 2.0, publisher=

, access-date=2 August 2016 {{cite web, url=https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0241/, title=PEP 241 -- Metadata for Python Software Packages, date=19 October 2001, publisher=

, access-date=18 August 2016 {{cite web, url=https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0301/, title=PEP 301 -- Package Index and Metadata for Distutils, date=24 October 2002, publisher=

, access-date=3 June 2012 {{cite web, url=https://pypi.python.org/pypi?:action=browse, title=Browse : Python Package Index, publisher=

, access-date=2 August 2016 {{cite web, url=https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0427/, title=PEP 427 -- The Wheel Binary Package Format 1.0, date=15 February 2013, publisher=

, access-date=28 October 2017 * Archive networks Python (programming language)