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How To Install Python Packages – Part III

Posted October 24, 2019
Madhuri Sangaraju and Jay Parmar
QuantInsti

For the initial installation instructions see Part I and Part II.

What happens if the package is not installed?

As we had mentioned previously, Python has certain built-in packages which are installed along with the installation of Python. But what about the packages that do not come along with Python installation. If you try to import such packages without installing them first you would get an error called ‘ModuleNotFoundError’.

For example, Backtrader is a Python package used for live trading and backtesting trading strategies. You can see the error when we try to import it.

# import the package
import backtrader

Python

PyPI – Python Package Index

Most open source Python packages are made available through PyPI – Python Package Index. It is a repository of software for the Python programming language. You can find the packages developed and shared by the Python community here. You can also publish your package through PyPI.

To install the packages from PyPI you would need a package installer. The recommended package installer for PyPI is ‘pip’. Pip is installed along when you install Python in your system. You need not worry about downloading or installing pip exclusively. However, we will still cover the installation of pip in the next section of ‘how to install Python packages tutorial’.

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