What are some pip commands to remove excess space stored by pip installation?

Question

Are there pip commands, if any, to remove excessive space caused by pip installations without affecting operations of existing packages?

I am using python 3.7

The cache serves very useful purpose: it caches downloaded packages and generated wheel files so every time you create a new Python virtual environment you don't need to download and rebuild those packages. — phd, Sep 30 '19 at 03:30

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 17 '21 at 14:45

7

As of pip 20.1, you can just use pip cache purge Check one of the pip maintainers' SO answer here.

answered Dec 17 '21 at 14:45

Alk

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score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 30 '19 at 05:19

Cleaning up cache is not built in pip command. You have to clean the cache folder manually.

The default location for the cache directory depends on the Operating System:

Unix ~/.cache/pip and it respects the XDG_CACHE_HOME directory.

macOS ~/Library/Caches/pip.

Windows <CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA>\pip\Cache

For example,

# clean up cache on Linux
rm -rf ~/.cache/pip

References

pip install: Caching

What are some pip commands to remove excess space stored by pip installation?

2 Answers2