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pip show: Inspect One Package’s Metadata

Get version, location, and dependency info for one package.

pip show prints metadata for an installed package: version, install location, dependencies, and what depends on it. Useful for debugging the wrong version in CI.

What it does

Displays metadata for one or more installed packages - Name, Version, Location, Requires, and Required-by. With -f it also lists installed files.

Common usage

Terminal
pip show requests
pip show -f numpy
pip show requests urllib3

Common CI error: package not found

If the package is not installed, pip show prints a warning and exits non-zero, which can fail a strict pipeline step. Guard the call or check the exit code.

Terminal
# Failure:
# WARNING: Package(s) not found: requests
# (exit status 1)

# Fix: install first, or tolerate the miss
pip show requests || echo "not installed"

Options

OptionDoes
-f, --filesList installed files
--verboseShow extra metadata fields

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