Pip, which stands for “Pip Installs Packages,” is the package management system used to install and manage software packages written in Python. These packages are stored in the Python Package Index (PyPI). When you use pip to install a package, it also installs any dependencies required by that package. However, the behavior of pip when it comes to uninstalling packages and their dependencies is different and worth understanding.

Does Pip Remove Dependent Packages?

The short answer is: No, pip does not automatically remove dependencies when you uninstall a package.

Explanation

When you uninstall a package with pip, it only removes the specified package. The dependencies that were installed when you first installed the package remain in the environment. This is because other packages might depend on these shared dependencies, and automatically removing them could break other packages that are still needed.

Understanding Package Dependencies

Dependencies are simply nothing but other packages which are required for a particular package to function correctly.

Example: Let’s us consider if we install a package like ‘requests’, then it’s dependent on packages like ‘charset’, ‘urllib’, and ‘certifi’ etc.

Uninstalling the package with pip

To uninstall a package with ‘pip’, we can use the following command in the command prompt

pip uninstall <package_name>

Example: Command to uninstall the ‘request’ package

pip uninstall requests

Identifying Dependent Packages

We can even identify which packages are dependent on a package before uninstalling it. To achieve this we have tool named ‘pipdeptree’ tool which generated the dependency tree of installed packages.

1. Install pipdeptree package

#command prompt
pip install pipdeptree

2. To get the dependency tree of all the packages in our currently working environment we can simple use the following command in our command prompt

pipdeptree

Output:

Managing Dependencies

To manage dependencies effectively, we need to consider using virtual environment. This helps our project dependencies from the packages which are installed on the system which results in preventing conflicts. Steps to manage dependencies

1. Creation of Virtual Environment (Command Prompt)

python -m venv myenv 

2. Activate the virtual environment

myenv\Scripts\activate

3. Install the required package within the virtual environment

pip install <package_name>

Example:

Managing Dependencies Manually

To manage dependencies more effectively, you might need to check which packages are no longer needed and remove them manually. Here are some steps you can follow to manage dependencies:

1. List Installed Packages

You can list all the installed packages in your environment using:

pip list

This command shows all packages currently installed in your environment.

2. Check Package Dependencies

To check the dependencies of a particular package, you can use the pip show command:

pip show package-name

This command provides detailed information about the package, including its dependencies.

3. Remove Unused Dependencies

If you identify that certain dependencies are no longer needed, you can manually uninstall them using:

pip uninstall dependency-package-name

4. Use Tools to Manage Dependencies

There are tools available that can help manage dependencies more effectively. One such tool is pip-autoremove. It can help to remove a package and its unused dependencies. To use it, first install the tool:

pip install pip-autoremove

Then, use it to remove a package along with its dependencies:

pip-autoremove package-name

Preventing Dependency Issues

To prevent dependency issues we need to regularly check and remove orphaned packages. We can also take help of tools like pip-autoremove to get rid of orphaned packages.

1. Install pip-autoremove package

pip install pip-autoremove

2. Specify the package name that we want to remove and its dependencies

pip-autoremove <package_name> -y

*pip_automremove is deprecated and not working in your system then we can manually uninstall orphaned packages using following command

pip uninstall <orphaned_package(s)> -y

Conclusion

It’s crucial to manage package dependencies for maintaining a healthy python environment. By understanding how to uninstall, identify dependent and manage dependencies of packages we can prevent issues and ensure our python projects are running smoothly.