Difference in PIP format

What is the difference between:

python -m pip install forecasting


and

pip install forecasting


In my environment, the first is working when the second format raise the following error:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pip._internal'

pip

3 Answers
3

With reference to this GitHub issue:

https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/5373

Try the following command:

sudo easy_install pip


Answer to your first question.

From pip docs
pip is a command line program. When you install pip, a pip command is added to your system, which can be run from the command prompt as follows:

$ pip <pip arguments>


If you cannot run the pip command directly (possibly because the location where it was installed isn't on your operating system's PATH) then you can run pip via the Python interpreter:

$ python -m pip <pip arguments>


pip

They're two different ways a package can expose commands to the commandline.

pip is a console_script entry-point. Any package can define globally available commands that way, and PIP (the package) uses it to define pip (the command).

pip

console_script

pip

In case of pip, the function they're executing using this method is set to pip._internal.main():

pip

pip._internal.main()

entry_points={
"console_scripts": [
"pip=pip._internal:main",
],
},


On the other side python -m pip is using a switch for calling modules. If your module contains a __main__.py file, this file will simply be interpreted and executed by the Python interpreter.

python -m pip

__main__.py

In case of python -m pip, this file essentially contains

python -m pip

from pip._internal import main as _main
if __name__ == '__main__':
sys.exit(_main())


so the two commands try to do the same.

However, recently PIP has shown some weird quirks [1] [2] that cause one of the two to work, and the other one to fail.

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