`pip inspect` JSON output specification¶

Added in version 22.2.

Changed in version 23.0: version has been bumped to 1 and the format declared stable.

The pip inspect command produces a detailed JSON report of the Python environment, including installed distributions.

Specification¶

The report is a JSON object with the following properties:

version: the string 1. It will change only if and when backward incompatible changes are introduced, such as removing mandatory fields or changing the semantics or data type of existing fields. The introduction of backward incompatible changes will follow the usual pip processes such as the deprecation cycle or feature flags. Tools must check this field to ensure they support the corresponding version.
pip_version: a string with the version of pip used to produce the report.
installed: an array of InspectReportItem representing the distribution packages that are installed.
environment: an object describing the environment where the installation report was generated. See the section on environment markers in the Dependency specifiers specification for more information. Values have a string type.

An InspectReportItem is an object describing an installed distribution package with the following properties:

metadata: the metadata of the distribution, converted to a JSON object according to the PEP 566 transformation.
metadata_location: the location of the metadata of the installed distribution. Most of the time this is the .dist-info directory. For legacy installs it is the .egg-info directory.

Warning

This field may not necessarily point to a directory, for instance, in the case of older .egg installs.
direct_url: Information about the direct URL that was used for installation, if any, using the direct URL data structure. In most case, this field corresponds to the direct_url.json metadata, except for legacy editable installs, where it is emulated.
requested: true if the REQUESTED metadata is present, false otherwise. This field is only present for modern .dist-info installations.

Note

The REQUESTED metadata may not be generated by all installers. It is generated by pip since version 20.2.
installer: the content of the INSTALLER metadata, if present and not empty.

Example¶

Running the pip inspect command, in an environment where pip is installed in editable mode and packaging is installed as well, will produce an output similar to this (metadata abriged for brevity):

{
  "version": "1",
  "pip_version": "22.2.dev0",
  "installed": [
    {
      "metadata": {
        "metadata_version": "2.1",
        "name": "pyparsing",
        "version": "3.0.9",
        "summary": "pyparsing module - Classes and methods to define and execute parsing grammars",
        "description_content_type": "text/x-rst",
        "author_email": "Paul McGuire <ptmcg.gm+pyparsing@gmail.com>",
        "classifier": [
          "Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable",
          "Intended Audience :: Developers",
          "Intended Audience :: Information Technology",
          "License :: OSI Approved :: MIT License",
          "Operating System :: OS Independent",
          "Programming Language :: Python",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.6",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.7",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.8",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3 :: Only",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPython",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: PyPy",
          "Typing :: Typed"
        ],
        "requires_dist": [
          "railroad-diagrams ; extra == \"diagrams\"",
          "jinja2 ; extra == \"diagrams\""
        ],
        "requires_python": ">=3.6.8",
        "project_url": [
          "Homepage, https://github.com/pyparsing/pyparsing/"
        ],
        "provides_extra": [
          "diagrams"
        ],
        "description": "..."
      },
      "metadata_location": "/home/me/.virtualenvs/demoenv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pyparsing-3.0.9.dist-info",
      "installer": "pip",
      "requested": false
    },
    {
      "metadata": {
        "metadata_version": "2.1",
        "name": "packaging",
        "version": "21.3",
        "platform": [
          "UNKNOWN"
        ],
        "summary": "Core utilities for Python packages",
        "description_content_type": "text/x-rst",
        "home_page": "https://github.com/pypa/packaging",
        "author": "Donald Stufft and individual contributors",
        "author_email": "donald@stufft.io",
        "license": "BSD-2-Clause or Apache-2.0",
        "classifier": [
          "Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable",
          "Intended Audience :: Developers",
          "License :: OSI Approved :: Apache Software License",
          "License :: OSI Approved :: BSD License",
          "Programming Language :: Python",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3 :: Only",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.6",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.7",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.8",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPython",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: PyPy"
        ],
        "requires_dist": [
          "pyparsing (!=3.0.5,>=2.0.2)"
        ],
        "requires_python": ">=3.6",
        "description": "..."
      },
      "metadata_location": "/home/me/.virtualenvs/demoenv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/packaging-21.3.dist-info",
      "installer": "pip",
      "requested": true
    },
    {
      "metadata": {
        "metadata_version": "2.1",
        "name": "pip",
        "version": "22.2.dev0",
        "summary": "The PyPA recommended tool for installing Python packages.",
        "home_page": "https://pip.pypa.io/",
        "author": "The pip developers",
        "author_email": "distutils-sig@python.org",
        "license": "MIT",
        "classifier": [
          "Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable",
          "Intended Audience :: Developers",
          "License :: OSI Approved :: MIT License",
          "Topic :: Software Development :: Build Tools",
          "Programming Language :: Python",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3 :: Only",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.7",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.8",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPython",
          "Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: PyPy"
        ],
        "requires_python": ">=3.7",
        "project_url": [
          "Documentation, https://pip.pypa.io",
          "Source, https://github.com/pypa/pip",
          "Changelog, https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/news/"
        ],
        "description": "..."
      },
      "metadata_location": "/home/me/pip/src/pip.egg-info",
      "direct_url": {
        "url": "file:///home/me/pip/src",
        "dir_info": {
          "editable": true
        }
      }
    }
  ],
  "environment": {
    "implementation_name": "cpython",
    "implementation_version": "3.8.10",
    "os_name": "posix",
    "platform_machine": "x86_64",
    "platform_release": "5.13-generic",
    "platform_system": "Linux",
    "platform_version": "...",
    "python_full_version": "3.8.10",
    "platform_python_implementation": "CPython",
    "python_version": "3.8",
    "sys_platform": "linux"
  }
}

pip inspect JSON output specification¶

Specification¶

Example¶

`pip inspect` JSON output specification¶