Installing packages from a list using pip

Question

I am trying to install a list of packages using pip.

The code which I used is:

import pip

def install(package_name):
        try:
            pip.main(['install', package_name])
        except:
            print("Unable to install " + package_name)

This code works fine and if a package is not available, it gives an error:

No matching distributions found

However, what I am trying to do is if an installation fails (for eg: invalid package name), I want to print the package which failed.

What can be done for that?

Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

Answer 1

Try checking the return value for non-zero, which indicates an error occurred with the install. Not all errors trigger exceptions.

import pip

def install(package_name):
        try:
            pipcode = pip.main(['install', package_name])
            if pipcode != 0:
                print("Unable to install " + package_name + " ; pipcode %d" % pipcode)
        except:
            print("Unable to install " + package_name)