Python: Installing packages with easy_install

A lot of Python packages are available online at the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository. The advantage of using PyPI is that packages available there can be installed directly from the command-line. These packages can also be upgraded or uninstalled directly from the command-line.

To be able to do install directly from PyPI, one last package needs to be downloaded and installed manually: setuptools. Follow the installation instructions for setuptools from an Administrator command-prompt and remember to add the Scripts directory to the PATH.

After setuptools is successfully installed, its easy_install script can be used to install any package from the command-line. For example, to install a package named foobar from PyPI:

$ sudo easy_install foobar

Note that setuptools is not available for Python 3.x. If you are using Python 3.x, look at distribute instead.

Related: For information on installing downloaded packages go here.

Tried with: setuptools 0.6c11 and Python 2.7.3 64-bit