Installing and removing python packages on macOS

Since python on macOS comes without the pip package manager, I was wondering how to install and remove packages.

As it turns out, there's an older »package manager« called easy-install that can be used to install, but not remove packages.

If you're happy installing packages system-wide, i.e. inside /Library/Python on macOS, you can run

# easy_install pyyaml

Installing into the user's package directory in $HOME/Library/Python can be done by

$ easy_install --user pyyaml

Removing packages isn't quite as straightforward as easy_install doesn't offer a command to do so. The manual (linked above) suggests to run

# easy_install -mxN pyyaml

prior to deleting a package, but I have not looked into what that entails.

Essentially, all that seems to be necessary is to delete the corresponding line from the package database, located at /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/easy-install.pth, for example, and then delete the .egg file (a ZIP).