python setup.py uninstall

Asked 11/10, 2009 at 9:6 Answered 24/6, 2022 at 23:27

940

I have installed a python package with python setup.py install.

How do I uninstall it?

Boudreau answered 11/10, 2009 at 9:6 Comment(5)

The accepted answer is outdated. Use pip uninstall <your_package>. See #1232188. – Plumper 12/9, 2014 at 8:33

pip uninstall is not a valid answer anymore. Here is the proof. [sri@localhost python]$ pip uninstall foo DEPRECATION: Uninstalling a distutils installed project (foo) has been deprecated and will be removed in a future version. This is due to the fact that uninstalling a distutils project will only partially uninstall the project. – Autostability 13/3, 2015 at 16:45

@Autostability that does not show anymore. – Bathsheba 21/10, 2018 at 23:25

@J.C.Rocamonde With a package I've created, the latest version of pip shows

It is a distutils installed project and thus we cannot accurately determine which files belong to it which would lead to only a partial uninstall.

so this is still an issue. – Gnash 9/1, 2019 at 16:2

@Gnash at the top of your setup.py file do "from setuptools import setup" instead of "from distutils.core import setup". – Immemorial 21/6, 2019 at 21:0

1156

Note: Avoid using python setup.py install use pip install .

You need to remove all files manually, and also undo any other stuff that installation did manually.

If you don't know the list of all files, you can reinstall it with the --record option, and take a look at the list this produces.

To record a list of installed files, you can use:

python setup.py install --record files.txt

Once you want to uninstall you can use xargs to do the removal:

xargs rm -rf < files.txt

Or if you're running Windows, use Powershell:

Get-Content files.txt | ForEach-Object {Remove-Item $_ -Recurse -Force}

Then delete also the containing directory, e.g. /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/my_module-0.1.egg/ on macOS. It has no files, but Python will still import an empty module:

>>> import my_module
>>> my_module.__file__
None

Once deleted, Python shows:

>>> import my_module
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'my_module'

Jones answered 11/10, 2009 at 9:12 Comment(10)

Ubuntu: $ sudo pip --verbose install <package_name> also works – Pavilion 9/7, 2013 at 4:43

If this does not work, add sudo as follows: cat files.txt | xargs sudo rm -rf – Monkery 4/2, 2014 at 22:13

This will mess up on files with spaces. See my answer below: https://mcmap.net/q/53364/-python-setup-py-uninstall – Envoy 9/8, 2014 at 13:53

How can I re-install the package I have the source code of using setup.py from it? – Reflexion 28/3, 2015 at 12:57

This also leaves empty directories in their place. – Tungusic 9/7, 2015 at 8:25

Hi, I tried your suggestion, for some of the files when I try cat files.txt | xargs rm -rf it says permission denied, even in sudo mode, e.g. for /usr/local/bin/pydoc or /usr/local/bin/idle Any ideas why? – Cupping 28/9, 2015 at 16:39

Useful if package is not on pip! – Merry 6/2, 2016 at 23:3

For my module 'fow': In my working directory, I had also to remove 'fow.pyc'. – Roomette 12/5, 2016 at 9:22

If you don't have administrative privilege, add a --user flag too! – Fury 5/9, 2016 at 19:59

I think this should fix the spaces issue: cat files.txt | while read f; do sudo rm "$f"; done – Keli 24/12, 2019 at 16:58

220

For me, the following mostly works:

have pip installed, e.g.:

$ easy_install pip

Check, how is your installed package named from pip point of view:

$ pip freeze

This shall list names of all packages, you have installed (and which were detected by pip). The name can be sometime long, then use just the name of the package being shown at the and after #egg=. You can also in most cases ignore the version part (whatever follows == or -).

Then uninstall the package:

$ pip uninstall package.name.you.have.found

If it asks for confirmation about removing the package, then you are lucky guy and it will be removed.

pip shall detect all packages, which were installed by pip. It shall also detect most of the packages installed via easy_install or setup.py, but this may in some rare cases fail.

Here is real sample from my local test with package named ttr.rdstmc on MS Windows.

$ pip freeze |grep ttr
ttr.aws.s3==0.1.1dev
ttr.aws.utils.s3==0.3.0
ttr.utcutils==0.1.1dev

$ python setup.py develop
.....
.....
Finished processing dependencies for ttr.rdstmc==0.0.1dev

$ pip freeze |grep ttr
ttr.aws.s3==0.1.1dev
ttr.aws.utils.s3==0.3.0
-e hg+https://[email protected]/vlcinsky/ttr.rdstmc@d61a9922920c508862602f7f39e496f7b99315f0#egg=ttr.rdstmc-dev
ttr.utcutils==0.1.1dev

$ pip uninstall ttr.rdstmc
Uninstalling ttr.rdstmc:
  c:\python27\lib\site-packages\ttr.rdstmc.egg-link
Proceed (y/n)? y
  Successfully uninstalled ttr.rdstmc

$ pip freeze |grep ttr
ttr.aws.s3==0.1.1dev
ttr.aws.utils.s3==0.3.0
ttr.utcutils==0.1.1dev

Edit 2015-05-20

All what is written above still applies, anyway, there are small modifications available now.

Install pip in python 2.7.9 and python 3.4

Recent python versions come with a package ensurepip allowing to install pip even when being offline:

$ python -m ensurepip --upgrade

On some systems (like Debian Jessie) this is not available (to prevent breaking system python installation).

Using `grep` or `find`

Examples above assume, you have grep installed. I had (at the time I had MS Windows on my machine) installed set of linux utilities (incl. grep). Alternatively, use native MS Windows find or simply ignore that filtering and find the name in a bit longer list of detected python packages.

Convict answered 9/10, 2012 at 10:19 Comment(8)

which packaging tool/version are you using for this to work? (distutils, distribute, etc...) – Aam 4/5, 2013 at 14:21

I use setuptools. You may check bitbucket.org/vlcinsky/ttr.aws.utils.s3 (which is not perfect). Anyway, I am quite unhappy with use of namespace packages, sometime import are broken without visible reason. But it is another story. – Convict 14/5, 2013 at 13:25

correcting myself. Even though I import setuptools, in fact I use distribute. Another lesson: when installing my own package from pypi and planning to develop another one locally sharing the same namespace, do not use $ pip install <the package>, use $ easy_install <the package>, otherwise you run into conflicts when importing your develop package. – Convict 19/5, 2013 at 20:47

To help others: because I'm not root, I install everything in my home. Here is what I did easy_install --user --prefix=$HOME pip. Then I added the following in my PATH: ln -s /home/tflutre/.local/bin/pip ~/bin, ln -s /home/tflutre/.local/bin/pip2.7 ~/bin and ln -s /home/tflutre/.local/bin/pip2 ~/bin. – Mcmillan 20/2, 2014 at 8:50

thanks for mentioning freeze. now i need to find out about this develop command. – Pacifically 8/7, 2014 at 18:31

This should be accepted answer, as is much easier and pip usually comes with Python anyway. It is simple to use in command prompt/terminal - pip uninstall module or python -m pip uninstall module should work. Also should be cross-platform, as is part of Python. – Instantly 28/1, 2016 at 17:3

Agree with @Edward, and it even works on Windows since Python v2.7.10. – Cle 3/10, 2016 at 3:6

Hmmm, this failed with "It is a distutils installed project and thus we cannot accurately determine which files belong to it which would lead to only a partial uninstall." for Python 2.7.15+, pip 18.1, Ubuntu 18.10, this repo. – Aam 1/1, 2019 at 19:8

The #1 answer has problems:

Won't work on mac.
If a file is installed which includes spaces or other special characters, the xargs command will fail, and delete any files/directories which matched the individual words.
the -r in rm -rf is unnecessary and at worst could delete things you don't want to.

Instead, for unix-like:

sudo python setup.py install --record files.txt
# inspect files.txt to make sure it looks ok. Then:
tr '\n' '\0' < files.txt | xargs -0 sudo rm -f --

And for windows:

python setup.py bdist_wininst
dist/foo-1.0.win32.exe

There are also unsolvable problems with uninstalling setup.py install which won't bother you in a typical case. For a more complete answer, see this wiki page:

https://ofswiki.org/wiki/Uninstalling_setup.py_install

Envoy answered 8/8, 2014 at 17:34 Comment(11)

Why do you just not leave a suggestion under the upvoted one? Note that, these "serious problems" are about corner cases. – Chatterbox 3/9, 2014 at 11:30

I left a comment under the upvoted one. My comment is buried under a "load more comments" link which very few people click. I also made my own answer because I had a lot more to say, ie. the link in my answer. Also, corner case would not be the first term which comes to my mind when a file has a space in it. – Envoy 3/9, 2014 at 23:46

For what it's worth, I think this will fail on filenames that contain newlines :) Whether any package maintainers are that evil, I hope I never find out. – Stallard 13/11, 2014 at 20:14

@JackO'Connor, that is true, and the link with more info also points that out. – Envoy 20/11, 2014 at 3:32

On OS X Mavericks, at least, xargs does not have the -d option. Why? Because Apple loves you. Anyway this has the same effects as above, and is safe with spaces and such. It's Bash specific, though. After running the install with --record to files.txt: OIFS=$IFS; IFS=$'\n'; FILES=( $( cat files.txt ) ); IFS=$OIFS; sudo rm -rf "${FILES[@]}" – Ictus 31/3, 2015 at 19:10

@JosephSikorski. Thanks for the insight. I've updated my answer for a mac version. Your suggested command will fail on typical programs due to argument length limit. – Envoy 9/4, 2015 at 6:51

@IanKelling Embedding variables inside printf's format string will fail if the string happens to contain e.g. % or \ characters. Always provide a format string: printf '%s\0' "$line" (also avoids echo). Though you may further avoid the loop by just using tr '\n' '\0' < files.txt | xargs -0 rm -f – Aminoplast 13/4, 2015 at 15:40

small improvement (as you use sudo to install the files) the uninstall command should be tr '\n' '\0' < files.txt | xargs -0 sudo rm -f -- – Wolters 1/4, 2016 at 2:35

This won't take care of new folders that were created by the install. – Archenteron 19/8, 2016 at 16:57

@Salami, that is already covered in the link for the "complete answer" (and it's been covered for years now) – Envoy 22/8, 2016 at 11:35

This won't work with files containing newlines in their name. – Cropeared 30/4, 2022 at 11:50

First record the files you have installed. You can repeat this command, even if you have previously run setup.py install:

python setup.py install --record files.txt

When you want to uninstall you can just:

sudo rm $(cat files.txt)

This works because the rm command takes a whitespace-seperated list of files to delete and your installation record is just such a list.

Inobservance answered 28/10, 2010 at 12:0 Comment(1)

Is there a way to check not only if it was my program that installed it but also if since then, no other application used this resource? For example, I installed a tool, to do so, I had to install several libraries, maybe some of them were already installed (which means I can't remove in the uninstall process) but also I can't remove anything that other applications didn't installed because my library had installed first.. – Deserve 2/5, 2018 at 15:18

Now python gives you the choice to install pip during the installation (I am on Windows, and at least python does so for Windows!). Considering you had chosen to install pip during installation of python (you don't actually have to choose because it is default), pip is already installed for you. Then, type in pip in command prompt, you should see a help come up. You can find necessary usage instructions there. E.g. pip list shows you the list of installed packages. You can use

pip uninstall package_name

to uninstall any package that you don't want anymore. Read more here (pip documentation).

Kosciusko answered 3/9, 2015 at 17:44 Comment(1)

Is this a recommended way to uninstall a package that was installed by python setup.py install? It seems to work, but not sure if there are any side effects because it was not installed by pip install. Also, what about a package installed by python setup.py develop? Would you still recommend using pip uninstall over python setup.py develop --uninstall? – Belittle 7/4, 2023 at 10:15

Not exactly answering the question, but something that helps me every day:

Install your packages with

pip install .

This puts the package in $HOME/.local. Uninstall with

pip uninstall <package_name>

Overelaborate answered 16/2, 2018 at 11:49 Comment(1)

pip unistall . didn't work for me, but pip uninstall <package_name> did, thanks! – Orchid 15/11, 2019 at 9:24

The lazy way: simply uninstall from the Windows installation menu (if you're using Windows), or from the rpm command, provided you first re-install it after creating a distribution package.

For example,

python setup.py bdist_wininst
dist/foo-1.0.win32.exe

("foo" being an example of course).

Theologize answered 11/10, 2009 at 9:13 Comment(6)

I don't know if I like it, but you get a point for orthogal thinking. :) – Timbal 11/10, 2009 at 9:26

To be honest, I'm not sure either hence "the lazy way" ;-) But I thought I'd mention it was possible to create more "standard" installer. It's strange the setup.py doesn't provide a clean way to remove packages though. – Theologize 11/10, 2009 at 9:30

Uninstalls require centralized registries of installed packages and it's files, and there isn't one. Discussions are ongoing on how to improve this story and it might be solved in Python 2.7/3.2 or 2.8/3.3 or so. – Timbal 11/10, 2009 at 9:33

That's what I thought. Well, it's good to know it might be sorted out soon, thanks the information! – Theologize 11/10, 2009 at 9:39

@Lennart: there won't be Python 2.8 at least that's the current official statement – Rejection 25/7, 2012 at 13:30

@PiotrOwsiak: Yes, but that was not the statement then. 2.8 was still a possibility at that time and remained so up until PEP 404 was approved, end of last year, I think. – Timbal 25/7, 2012 at 14:28

Go to your python package directory and remove your .egg file, e.g.: In python 2.5(ubuntu): /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/

In python 2.6(ubuntu): /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/

Meek answered 11/10, 2009 at 9:13 Comment(2)

Works, unless the install installed files outside of the package, which some do, like setuptools that installs and easy_install command. – Timbal 11/10, 2009 at 9:17

Normally, if a package was installed using python setup.py as specified by the OP, there would not be an egg. OTOH, if there is one because easy_install was used, the documented way to uninstall packages is to use easy_install -m before deleting the egg file; otherwise, egg shells may be left behind in the easy-install.pth file. – Absinthism 11/10, 2009 at 17:10

Probably you can do this as an alternative :-

1) Get the python version -

[linux machine]# python
Python 2.4.3 (#1, Jun 18 2012, 14:38:55)

-> The above command gives you the current python Version which is 2.4.3

2) Get the installation directory of python -

[linux machine]# whereis python
python: /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/python2.4 /usr/lib/python2.4 /usr/local/bin/python2.5 /usr/include/python2.4 /usr/share/man/man1/python.1.gz

-> From above command you can get the installation directory which is - /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages

3) From here you can remove the packages and python egg files

[linux machine]# cd /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages
[linux machine]# rm -rf paramiko-1.12.0-py2.4.egg paramiko-1.7.7.1-py2.4.egg paramiko-1.9.0-py2.4.egg

This worked for me.. And i was able to uninstall package which was troubling me :)

Selfimmolating answered 26/12, 2013 at 6:44 Comment(0)

Install from local python setup.py install

Uninstall from local pip uninstall mypackage

Sibelle answered 24/6, 2022 at 23:27 Comment(0)

I think you can open the setup.py, locate the package name, and then ask pip to uninstall it.

Assuming the name is available in a 'METADATA' variable:

pip uninstall $(python -c "from setup import METADATA; print METADATA['name']")

Reliquary answered 25/10, 2015 at 3:57 Comment(0)

At {virtualenv}/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ (if not using virtualenv then {system_dir}/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/)

Remove the egg file (e.g. distribute-0.6.34-py2.7.egg)
If there is any from file easy-install.pth, remove the corresponding line (it should be a path to the source directory or of an egg file).

Playlet answered 4/9, 2019 at 14:47 Comment(1)

Thanks! Removing the corresponding line from the easy-install.pth file was the only way to remove pytorch installed via python3 setup.py develop command. – Lakh 21/5, 2021 at 13:44

Extending on what Martin said, recording the install output and a little bash scripting does the trick quite nicely. Here's what I do...

for i in $(less install.record);
sudo rm $i;
done;

And presto. Uninstalled.

Accede answered 11/10, 2009 at 9:7 Comment(1)

Much easier to write this as sudo xargs rm -v < install.record. – Geniegenii 12/10, 2013 at 20:32

If you still have files that are supposed to be deleted after re-installing a package, make sure the folder build is also deleted. Therefore, assuming that pkg is the package you want to delete:

rm -r $(python3 -c "import pkg; print(pkg.__path__[0] + '*' )") 
rm -rf build

Obove work out for python3 and delete the package and its *.egg-info file

Hoarsen answered 4/9, 2019 at 13:50 Comment(0)

It might be better to remove related files by using bash to read commands, like the following:

sudo python setup.py install --record files.txt
sudo bash -c "cat files.txt | xargs rm -rf"

Preiser answered 21/12, 2013 at 14:13 Comment(1)

This is a copy of an existing earlier answer. – Mt 1/5, 2019 at 14:36

I had run "python setup.py install" at some point in the past accidentally in my global environment, and had much difficulty uninstalling. These solutions didn't help. "pip uninstall " didn't work with "Can't uninstall 'splunk-appinspect'. No files were found to uninstall." "sudo pip uninstall " didn't work "Cannot uninstall requirement splunk-appinspect, not installed". I tried uninstalling pip, deleting the pip cache, searching my hard drive for the package, etc...

"pip show " eventually led me to the solution, the "Location:" was pointing to a directory, and renaming that directory caused the packaged to be removed from pip's list. I renamed the directory back, and it didn't reappear in pip's list, and now I can reinstall my package in a virtualenv.

Huihuie answered 16/2, 2018 at 19:19 Comment(0)

I had run python setup.py install once in my PyCharm, it installs all the packages into my conda base environment. Later when I want to remove all these packages, pip uninstall does not work. I had to delete them from /anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages manually :(

So I don't see the reason why they use setup.py instead of writing requirements.txt file. The requirement file can be used to install packages in virtual environment and won't mess with system python packages.

Entail answered 14/1, 2019 at 1:5 Comment(0)

I have a develop egg link set up with python setup.py develop under a conda environment and with pip uninstall <packagename> the egg link is removed. At least in this scenario, pip uninstall is one way to do this.

Conundrum answered 10/8, 2021 at 5:43 Comment(0)

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Edit 2015-05-20

Install pip in python 2.7.9 and python 3.4

Using grep or find

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Using `grep` or `find`