What is PDM?

PDM is meant to be a next generation Python package management tool. It was originally built for personal use. If you feel you are going well with Pipenv or Poetry and don't want to introduce another package manager, just stick to it. But if you are missing something that is not present in those tools, you can probably find some goodness in pdm.

Highlights of features

• Simple and fast dependency resolver, mainly for large binary distributions.
• A PEP 517 build backend.
• PEP 621 project metadata.
• Flexible and powerful plug-in system.
• Versatile user scripts.
• Opt-in centralized installation cache like pnpm.

Comparisons to other alternatives

Pipenv

Pipenv is a dependency manager that combines pip and venv, as the name implies. It can install packages from a non-standard Pipfile.lock or Pipfile. However, Pipenv does not handle any packages related to packaging your code, so it’s useful only for developing non-installable applications (Django sites, for example). If you’re a library developer, you need setuptools anyway.

Poetry

Poetry manages environments and dependencies in a similar way to Pipenv, but it can also build .whl files with your code, and it can upload wheels and source distributions to PyPI. It has a pretty user interface and users can customize it via a plugin. Poetry uses the pyproject.toml standard, but it does not follow the standard specifying how metadata should be represented in a pyproject.toml file (PEP 621), instead using a custom [tool.poetry] table. This is partly because Poetry came out before PEP 621.

Hatch

Hatch can also manage environments (it allows multiple environments per project, but it does not allow to put them in the project directory), and it can manage packages (but without lockfile support). Hatch can also be used to package a project (with PEP 621-compliant pyproject.toml files) and upload it to PyPI.

This project

PDM can manage virtual environments (venvs) in both project and centralized locations, similar to Pipenv. It reads project metadata from a standardized pyproject.toml file and supports lockfiles. Users can add additional functionality through plugins, which can be shared by uploading them as distributions.

Unlike Poetry and Hatch, PDM is not limited to a specific build backend; users have the freedom to choose any build backend they prefer.

Installation

PDM requires python version 3.7 or higher.

Via Install Script

Like Pip, PDM provides an installation script that will install PDM into an isolated environment.

For Linux/Mac

curl -sSL https://pdm.fming.dev/dev/install-pdm.py | python3 -

For Windows

(Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://pdm.fming.dev/dev/install-pdm.py -UseBasicParsing).Content | python -

For security reasons, you should verify the checksum of install-pdm.py. It can be downloaded from install-pdm.py.sha256.

The installer will install PDM into the user site and the location depends on the system:

• $HOME/.local/bin for Unix
• %APPDATA%\Python\Scripts on Windows

You can pass additional options to the script to control how PDM is installed:

usage: install-pdm.py [-h] [-v VERSION] [--prerelease] [--remove] [-p PATH] [-d DEP]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v VERSION, --version VERSION | envvar: PDM_VERSION
                        Specify the version to be installed, or HEAD to install from the main branch
  --prerelease | envvar: PDM_PRERELEASE    Allow prereleases to be installed
  --remove | envvar: PDM_REMOVE            Remove the PDM installation
  -p PATH, --path PATH | envvar: PDM_HOME  Specify the location to install PDM
  -d DEP, --dep DEP | envvar: PDM_DEPS     Specify additional dependencies, can be given multiple times

You can either pass the options after the script or set the env var value.

Alternative Installation Methods

If you are on macOS and using homebrew, install it by:

brew install pdm

If you are on Windows and using Scoop, install it by:

scoop bucket add frostming https://github.com/frostming/scoop-frostming.git
scoop install pdm

Otherwise, it is recommended to install pdm in an isolated environment with pipx:

pipx install pdm

Or you can install it under a user site:

pip install --user pdm

With asdf-vm

asdf plugin add pdm
asdf install pdm latest

Quickstart

Initialize a new PDM project

pdm init

Answer the questions following the guide, and a PDM project with a pyproject.toml file will be ready to use.

Install dependencies

pdm add requests flask

You can add multiple dependencies in the same command. After a while, check the pdm.lock file to see what is locked for each package.

Badges

Tell people you are using PDM in your project by including the markdown code in README.md:

[![pdm-managed](https://img.shields.io/badge/pdm-managed-blueviolet)](https://pdm.fming.dev)

Packaging Status

PDM Eco-system

Awesome PDM is a curated list of awesome PDM plugins and resources.

Sponsors

Credits

This project is strongly inspired by pyflow and poetry.

License

This project is open sourced under MIT license, see the LICENSE file for more details.