Installing Python and packages on an Offline Machine: A Comprehensive Guide
The Environment
Let us begin by defining the environment in which this guide may be of some great use. If your situation can be described by one or more of the following, you might have great results following this guide...
- The machine you are developing on is offline. (No connection to the internet)
- You need to develop and run Python on the machine that is completely offline.
If this sounds like you, read the following cases in which a few minor details may make a big difference in getting you started.
Case1:
- You are not allowed to plug in any external media devices into the offline machine. This includes but is not limited to a USB, CD, floppy disk, or any other removable media that may be of some use in helping you transfer Python files to the offline machine.
- You are allowed to map a network drive (somewhere else on the local network). This would fix the problem mentioned in number one with removable media.
Answer: In this case, just proceed with the guide, as this was my case and I will explain in detail how I solved my problem.
Case2:
- There is no physical way to transfer files onto the development machine that is offline.
Answer: If this is your case, you need to get in touch with the admin team who handles the software on your development machine. Direct them to this guide to proceed.
Let's Get Started
Warning A:
The following must be performed on a computer with an internet connection. It is impossible to download things from any website without an internet connection.
Warning B:
There is a longer way, and there is a shorter way to do the following. To avoid the longer way, you must be able to install python on a different machine that is online. This can be the same machine that you are using to download the packages and python version, or it can even be a home machine. This can be any machine in the world that is on the internet. It's sole purpose will be to help you identify the dependencies of each package.
Installing Python
- Visit the python website and identify the version you want. 2.7.9 and up is recommended for this guide. Download the file for your specific system.
Python 2.7.9 : https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-279/
Python 3.7.3 : https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-373/
The reason I provided Python 2.7.9 is because that is the earliest 2.7.x version that comes with pip (a package manager).
- Visit the python package index to locate the packages you will be using in your python project. https://pypi.org/
- Search the package you need, go to the downloads, and get the (.tar.gz) file. Not the .whl files unless you know what you are doing with those.
- Tip: If you want to keep track of the packages you are installing, I suggest you put them all in one folder somewhere you can find, or just write them down on paper.
- Unpack the .tar.gz package files. You can get rid of the .tar.gz once you unpack them as they will not needed any longer.
- Install the version of python that you downloaded for your system in step 1 above.
(This may just be running the .msi file for windows or unpacking some files for linux) If you are not sure how, just look at this brilliant guide
https://realpython.com/installing-python/
Now you should be able to go to your terminal and type "python" and get the python interpreter to open up. If you get a "cannot find python command" you need to setup your path variable.
Windows guide: https://geek-university.com/python/add-python-to-the-windows-path/
Linux guide: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/python_environment.htm
Your python installation is done! And your packages should also be ready to install!
Installing Python Packages
What you need to know here is that MOST all python packages have dependencies, which are other packages which packages need installed before they can be installed. If you need more explanation on dependencies, read here: https://www.fullstackpython.com/application-dependencies.html
Before proceeding be sure to add the Python/Scripts folder to your path variable too or pip will not work. Follow this link for instructions. https://appuals.com/fix-pip-is-not-recognized-as-an-internal-or-external-command/
- Install packages using
pip install [package_name] for every package you need, on your machine that is on the internet, and then do a pip freeze to see all the packages installed.
- Once you can see all the packages installed, which will include the dependencies for the ones you ran
pip install on, you need to manually download these dependencies from the python package index https://pypi.org/ just like you did with the regular packages.
Moving Offline
Once you have identified all the packages you will need, and all of their dependencies, you will need to download them, unpack all of them, and move them into one folder, which I will call "OFFLINE_SETUP_FOLDER".
To be clear:
The packages we installed before was only to find out the dependencies we were going to need. You do not have to re-download the packages you have already downloaded before running pip install. You should only need to download the dependencies you have found during the pip freeze command.
Finally you need to copy into the "OFFLINE_SETUP_FOLDER" your python installation file, be it a .msi file for windows, or the .tar file for linux.
Your "OFFLINE_SETUP_FOLDER" should contain the following...
In the following, package can be the name of any package that you downloaded, and the a and b inpackage1a and package1b just represent dependencies for that package. These file names are just examples for packages
- python.msi (installation file for python)
- /package1 (normal package folder)
- /package1a (package dependency folder)
- /package1b (package dependency folder)
- /package2 (normal package folder)
- /package3 (normal package folder)
- /package3a (package dependency folder)
- Once this is complete, you need to move that folder onto the machine that is completely offline form the network.
- Then run the installation for python as you did before and install it on the machine. Do no forget to setup the path variable. Refer back to the Installing Python section if needed.
- Open your terminal or CMD and CD into the "OFFLINE_SETUP_FOLDER".
- Now you need to CD into each individual package folder, and run this command:
python setup.py install and let it run.
- If the package install fails, it will be because one of the dependencies has not been installed. If this is the case, CD into the dependency that is says is missing, and run
python setup.py install in there first.
- Keep repeating these steps until all packages and dependencies have been installed.
This is the end of this python guide for installing python on an offline machine. I hope this helped :)
