Introduction

Poetry is a tool for dependency management and packaging in Python. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage (install/update) them for you.

System requirements

Poetry requires Python 2.7 or 3.4+. It is multi-platform and the goal is to make it work equally well on Windows, Linux and OSX.

Installation

Poetry provides a custom installer that will install poetry isolated from the rest of your system by vendorizing its dependencies. This is the recommended way of installing poetry.

osx / linux / bashonwindows install instructions

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/python-poetry/poetry/master/get-poetry.py | python

windows powershell install instructions

(Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/python-poetry/poetry/master/get-poetry.py -UseBasicParsing).Content | python

The installer installs the poetry tool to Poetry's bin directory. On Unix it is located at $HOME/.poetry/bin and on Windows at %USERPROFILE%\.poetry\bin.

This directory will be in your $PATH environment variable, which means you can run them from the shell without further configuration. Open a new shell and type the following:

poetry --version

If you see something like Poetry 0.12.0 then you are ready to use Poetry. If you decide Poetry isn't your thing, you can completely remove it from your system by running the installer again with the --uninstall option or by setting the POETRY_UNINSTALL environment variable before executing the installer.

python get-poetry.py --uninstall
POETRY_UNINSTALL=1 python get-poetry.py

By default, Poetry is installed into the user's platform-specific home directory. If you wish to change this, you may define the POETRY_HOME environment variable:

POETRY_HOME=/etc/poetry python get-poetry.py

If you want to install prerelease versions, you can do so by passing --preview to get-poetry.py or by using the POETRY_PREVIEW environment variable:

python get-poetry.py --preview
POETRY_PREVIEW=1 python get-poetry.py

Similarly, if you want to install a specific version, you can use --version or the POETRY_VERSION environment variable:

python get-poetry.py --version 0.12.0
POETRY_VERSION=0.12.0 python get-poetry.py

Alternative installation methods (not recommended)

Installing with pip

Using pip to install Poetry is possible.

pip install --user poetry

Installing with pipx

Using pipx to install Poetry is also possible. [pipx] is used to install Python CLI applications globally while still isolating them in virtual environments. This allows for clean upgrades and uninstalls. pipx supports Python 3.6 and later. If using an earlier version of Python, consider pipsi.

pipx install poetry

pipx upgrade poetry

pipx uninstall poetry

Github repository.

Updating poetry

Updating Poetry to the latest stable version is as simple as calling the self update command.

poetry self update

If you want to install pre-release versions, you can use the --preview option.

poetry self update --preview

And finally, if you want to install a specific version, you can pass it as an argument to self update.

poetry self update 0.8.0

Enable tab completion for Bash, Fish, or Zsh

poetry supports generating completion scripts for Bash, Fish, and Zsh. See poetry help completions for full details, but the gist is as simple as using one of the following:

# Bash
poetry completions bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/poetry.bash-completion

# Bash (macOS/Homebrew)
poetry completions bash > $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion.d/poetry.bash-completion

# Fish
poetry completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/poetry.fish

# Zsh
poetry completions zsh > ~/.zfunc/_poetry

# Oh-My-Zsh
mkdir $ZSH/plugins/poetry
poetry completions zsh > $ZSH/plugins/poetry/_poetry

For zsh, you must then add the following line in your ~/.zshrc before compinit:

fpath+=~/.zfunc

For oh-my-zsh, you must then enable poetry in your ~/.zshrc plugins

plugins(
    poetry
    ...
    )