PyPI packages in the package registry

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The Python Package Index (PyPI) is the official third-party software repository for Python. Use the GitLab PyPI package registry to publish and share Python packages in your GitLab projects, groups, and organizations. This integration enables you to manage your Python dependencies alongside your code, providing a seamless workflow for Python development within GitLab.

The package registry works with:

For documentation of the specific API endpoints that the pip and twine clients use, see the PyPI API documentation.

Learn how to build a PyPI package.

Authenticate with the GitLab package registry

Before you interact with the GitLab package registry, you must authenticate with it.

You can authenticate with:

Do not use authentication methods other than the methods documented here. Undocumented authentication methods might be removed in the future.

To authenticate with a GitLab token:

  • Update the TWINE_USERNAME and TWINE_PASSWORD environment variables.

For example:

With a personal access token
run:
  image: python:latest
  variables:
    TWINE_USERNAME: <personal_access_token_name>
    TWINE_PASSWORD: <personal_access_token>
  script:
    - pip install build twine
    - python -m build
    - python -m twine upload --repository-url ${CI_API_V4_URL}/projects/${CI_PROJECT_ID}/packages/pypi dist/*
With a deploy token
run:
  image: python:latest
  variables:
    TWINE_USERNAME: <deploy_token_username>
    TWINE_PASSWORD: <deploy_token>
  script:
    - pip install build twine
    - python -m build
    - python -m twine upload --repository-url ${CI_API_V4_URL}/projects/${CI_PROJECT_ID}/packages/pypi dist/*
With a CI/CD job token
run:
  image: python:latest
  variables:
    TWINE_USERNAME: gitlab-ci-token
    TWINE_PASSWORD: $CI_JOB_TOKEN
  script:
    - pip install build twine
    - python -m build
    - python -m twine upload --repository-url ${CI_API_V4_URL}/projects/${CI_PROJECT_ID}/packages/pypi dist/*

Authenticate for a group

To authenticate with the package registry for a group:

  • Authenticate to the package registry, but use the group URL instead of the project URL: 
https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/groups/<group_id>/-/packages/pypi

Publish a PyPI package

You can publish a package with twine.

Prerequisites:

PyPI packages are published using your project ID. If your project is in a group, PyPI packages published to the project registry are also available in the group registry. For more information, see Install from a group.

To publish a package:

  1. Define your repository source, edit the ~/.pypirc file and add: 

    [distutils]
index-servers =
    gitlab

[gitlab]
repository = https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/pypi

  2. Upload your package with twine: 

    python3 -m twine upload --repository gitlab dist/*

    When a package is published successfully, a message like this is displayed: 

    Uploading distributions to https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/pypi
Uploading mypypipackage-0.0.1-py3-none-any.whl
100%|███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████| 4.58k/4.58k [00:00<00:00, 10.9kB/s]
Uploading mypypipackage-0.0.1.tar.gz
100%|███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████| 4.24k/4.24k [00:00<00:00, 11.0kB/s]

The package is published to the package registry, and is shown on the Packages and registries page.

Publish with inline authentication

If you didn’t use a .pypirc file to define your repository source, you can publish to the repository with inline authentication: 

TWINE_PASSWORD=<personal_access_token, deploy_token, or $CI_JOB_TOKEN> \
TWINE_USERNAME=<username, deploy_token_username, or gitlab-ci-token> \
python3 -m twine upload --repository-url https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/pypi dist/*

Publishing packages with the same name and version

You cannot publish a package if a package of the same name and version already exists. You must delete the existing package first. If you attempt to publish the same package more than once, a 400 Bad Request error occurs.

Install a PyPI package

When a PyPI package is not found in the package registry, the request is forwarded to pypi.org.

Administrators can disable this behavior in the Continuous Integration settings.

note
When you use the --index-url option, do not specify the port if it is a default port. http URLs default to 80, and https URLs default to 443.

Install from a project

To install the latest version of a package, use the following command: 

pip install --index-url https://<personal_access_token_name>:<personal_access_token>@gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/pypi/simple --no-deps <package_name>
  • <package_name> is the package name.
  • <personal_access_token_name> is a personal access token name with the read_api scope.
  • <personal_access_token> is a personal access token with the read_api scope.
  • <project_id> is either the project’s URL-encoded path (for example, group%2Fproject), or the project’s ID (for example 42).

In these commands, you can use --extra-index-url instead of --index-url. If you were following the guide and want to install the MyPyPiPackage package, you can run: 

pip install mypypipackage --no-deps --index-url https://<personal_access_token_name>:<personal_access_token>@gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/pypi/simple

This message indicates that the package was installed successfully: 

Looking in indexes: https://<personal_access_token_name>:****@gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/pypi/simple
Collecting mypypipackage
  Downloading https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/pypi/files/d53334205552a355fee8ca35a164512ef7334f33d309e60240d57073ee4386e6/mypypipackage-0.0.1-py3-none-any.whl (1.6 kB)
Installing collected packages: mypypipackage
Successfully installed mypypipackage-0.0.1

Install from a group

To install the latest version of a package from a group, use the following command: 

pip install --index-url https://<personal_access_token_name>:<personal_access_token>@gitlab.example.com/api/v4/groups/<group_id>/-/packages/pypi/simple --no-deps <package_name>

In this command:

  • <package_name> is the package name.
  • <personal_access_token_name> is a personal access token name with the read_api scope.
  • <personal_access_token> is a personal access token with the read_api scope.
  • <group_id> is the group ID.

In these commands, you can use --extra-index-url instead of --index-url. If you’re following the guide and want to install the MyPyPiPackage package, you can run: 

pip install mypypipackage --no-deps --index-url https://<personal_access_token_name>:<personal_access_token>@gitlab.example.com/api/v4/groups/<group_id>/-/packages/pypi/simple

Package names

GitLab looks for packages that use Python normalized names (PEP-503). The characters -, _, and . are all treated the same, and repeated characters are removed.

A pip install request for my.package looks for packages that match any of the three characters, such as my-package, my_package, and my....package.

Security implications

The security implications of using --extra-index-url versus --index-url when installing PyPI packages are significant and worth understanding in detail. If you use:

  • --index-url: This option replaces the default PyPI index with the specified URL. It’s more secure because it only checks the specified index for packages. Use this option when you want to ensure packages are only installed from a trusted, private source (like the GitLab PyPI registry).
  • --extra-index-url: This option adds an additional index to search, alongside the default PyPI index. It’s less secure and more open to dependency confusion attacks, because it checks both the default PyPI and the additional index for packages.

Using requirements.txt

If you want pip to access your public registry, add the --extra-index-url parameter along with the URL for your registry to your requirements.txt file. 

--extra-index-url https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/pypi/simple
package-name==1.0.0

If this is a private registry, you can authenticate in a couple of ways. For example:

  • Using your requirements.txt file: 

    --extra-index-url https://__token__:<personal_token>@gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/pypi/simple
package-name==1.0.0

  • Using a ~/.netrc file: 

    machine gitlab.example.com
login __token__
password <personal_token>

Versioning PyPI packages

Proper versioning is important for managing PyPI packages effectively. Follow these best practices to ensure your packages are versioned correctly.

Use semantic versioning (SemVer)

Adopt semantic versioning for your packages. The version number should be in the format MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH:

  • Increment MAJOR version for incompatible API changes.
  • Increment MINOR version for backwards-compatible new features.
  • Increment PATCH version for backwards-compatible bug fixes.

For example: 1.0.0, 1.1.0, 1.1.1.

For new projects, start with version 0.1.0. This indicates an initial development phase where the API is not yet stable.

Use valid version strings

Ensure your version string is valid according to PyPI standards. GitLab uses a specific regex to validate version strings: 

\A(?:
    v?
    (?:([0-9]+)!)?                                                 (?# epoch)
    ([0-9]+(?:\.[0-9]+)*)                                          (?# release segment)
    ([-_\.]?((a|b|c|rc|alpha|beta|pre|preview))[-_\.]?([0-9]+)?)?  (?# pre-release)
    ((?:-([0-9]+))|(?:[-_\.]?(post|rev|r)[-_\.]?([0-9]+)?))?       (?# post release)
    ([-_\.]?(dev)[-_\.]?([0-9]+)?)?                                (?# dev release)
    (?:\+([a-z0-9]+(?:[-_\.][a-z0-9]+)*))?                         (?# local version)
)\z}xi

You can experiment with the regex and try your version strings by using this regular expression editor.

For more details about the regex, see the Python documentation.

Supported CLI commands

The GitLab PyPI repository supports the following CLI commands:

  • twine upload: Upload a package to the registry.
  • pip install: Install a PyPI package from the registry.

Troubleshooting

To improve performance, the pip command caches files related to a package. Pip doesn’t remove data by itself. The cache grows as new packages are installed. If you encounter issues, clear the cache with this command: 

pip cache purge

Multiple index-url or extra-index-url parameters

You can define multiple index-url and extra-index-url parameters.

If you use the same domain name (such as gitlab.example.com) multiple times with different authentication tokens, pip may not be able to find your packages. This problem is due to how pip registers and stores your tokens during commands executions.

To workaround this issue, you can use a group deploy token with the scope read_package_registry from a common parent group for all projects or groups targeted by the index-url and extra-index-url values.