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 can publish to the GitLab package registry, you must authenticate.

To do this, you can use:

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

The TWINE_USERNAME and TWINE_PASSWORD environment variables are used to authenticate with a GitLab token.

Authenticate with a personal access token

To authenticate with a personal access token, update the TWINE_USERNAME and TWINE_PASSWORD environment variables: 

image: python:latest

run:
  variables:
    TWINE_USERNAME: <your_personal_access_token_name>
    TWINE_PASSWORD: <your_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/*

Authenticate with a deploy token

To authenticate with a deploy token, update the TWINE_USERNAME and TWINE_PASSWORD environment variables: 

image: python:latest

run:
  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/*

Authenticate with a CI job token

To authenticate with a CI job token, update the TWINE_USERNAME and TWINE_PASSWORD environment variables: 

image: python:latest

run:
  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 to access packages within a group

Follow the instructions above for the token type, but use the group URL in place of the project URL: 

https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/groups/<group_id>/-/packages/pypi

Publish a PyPI package

Prerequisites:

  • You must authenticate with the package registry.
  • Your version string must be valid.
  • The maximum allowed package size is 5 GB.
  • The maximum length of the description field is 4000 characters. Longer description strings are truncated.
  • You can’t upload the same version of a package multiple times. If you try, you receive the error 400 Bad Request.
  • PyPI packages are published using your projectID.
  • If your project is in a group, PyPI packages published to your project registry are also available at the group-level registry (see Install from the group level).

You can then publish a package by using twine.

Publish a PyPI package by using twine

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

To publish a PyPI package, run a command like: 

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

This message indicates that the package was published successfully: 

Uploading distributions to https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<your_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]

To view the published package, go to your project’s Packages and registries page.

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

TWINE_PASSWORD=<personal_access_token or deploy_token or $CI_JOB_TOKEN> TWINE_USERNAME=<username or 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/*

If you didn’t follow the steps on this page, ensure your package was properly built, and that you created a PyPI package with setuptools.

You can then upload your package by using the following command: 

python -m twine upload --repository <source_name> dist/<package_file>

Publishing packages with the same name or 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.

caution
When you use the --index-url option, do not specify the port if it is a default port, such as 80 for a URL starting with http or 443 for a URL starting with https.

Install from the project level

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/<your_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/<your_project_id>/packages/pypi/simple
Collecting mypypipackage
  Downloading https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<your_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

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.

Install from the group level

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. However, using --extra-index-url makes you vulnerable to dependency confusion attacks because it checks the PyPi repository for the package before it checks the custom repository. --extra-index-url adds the provided URL as an additional registry which the client checks if the package is present. --index-url tells the client to check for the package at the provided URL only.

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/<your_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.

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__:<your_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 <your_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.

Start with 0.1.0

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.

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.

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.