Config file

pip allows you to set all command line option defaults in a standard ini style config file.

The names and locations of the configuration files vary slightly across platforms.

• On Unix and Mac OS X the configuration file is: $HOME/.pip/pip.conf
• On Windows, the configuration file is: %HOME%\pip\pip.ini

You can set a custom path location for the config file using the environment variable PIP_CONFIG_FILE.

The names of the settings are derived from the long command line option, e.g. if you want to use a different package index (--index-url) and set the HTTP timeout (--default-timeout) to 60 seconds your config file would look like this:

[global]
timeout = 60
index-url = http://download.zope.org/ppix

Each subcommand can be configured optionally in its own section so that every global setting with the same name will be overridden; e.g. decreasing the timeout to 10 seconds when running the freeze(Freezing Requirements) command and using 60 seconds for all other commands is possible with:

[global]
timeout = 60

[freeze]
timeout = 10

Boolean options like --ignore-installed or --no-dependencies can be set like this:

[install]
ignore-installed = true
no-dependencies = yes

Appending options like --find-links can be written on multiple lines:

[global]
find-links =
    http://download.example.com

[install]
find-links =
    http://mirror1.example.com
    http://mirror2.example.com

Environment Variables

pip’s command line options can be set with environment variables using the formatPIP_<UPPER_LONG_NAME> . Dashes (-) have to replaced with underscores (_).

For example, to set the default timeout:

export PIP_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT=60

This is the same as passing the option to pip directly:

pip --default-timeout=60 [...]

To set options that can be set multiple times on the command line, just add spaces in between values. For example:

export PIP_FIND_LINKS="http://mirror1.example.com http://mirror2.example.com"

is the same as calling:

pip install --find-links=http://mirror1.example.com --find-links=http://mirror2.example.com

Config Precedence

Command line options have precedence over environment variables, which have precedence over the config file.

Within the config file, command specific sections have precedence over the global section.

Examples:

• --host=foo overrides PIP_HOST=foo
• PIP_HOST=foo overrides a config file with [global] host = foo
• A command specific section in the config file [<command>] host = bar overrides the option with same name in the [global] config file section

Command Completion

pip comes with support for command line completion in bash and zsh.

To setup for bash:

$ pip completion --bash >> ~/.profile

To setup for zsh:

$ pip completion --zsh >> ~/.zprofile

Alternatively, you can use the result of the completion command directly with the eval function of you shell, e.g. by adding the following to your startup file:

eval "`pip completion --bash`"