How do I find the location of my Python site-packages directory?

>>> import site; site.getsitepackages()
['/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages']

(or just first item with site.getsitepackages()[0])

A solution that:

• outside of virtualenv - provides the path of global site-packages,
• insidue a virtualenv - provides the virtualenv's site-packages

...is this one-liner:

python -c "from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib; print(get_python_lib())"

Formatted for readability (rather than use as a one-liner), that looks like the following:

from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib
print(get_python_lib())

Source: an very old version of "How to Install Django" documentation (though this is useful to more than just Django installation)

There are two types of site-packages directories, global and per user.

1. Global site-packages ("dist-packages") directories are listed in sys.path when you run:

    python -m site
   

   For a more concise list run getsitepackages from the site module in Python code:

    python -c 'import site; print(site.getsitepackages())'
   

   Caution: In virtual environments getsitepackages is not available with older versions of virtualenv, sys.path from above will list the virtualenv's site-packages directory correctly, though. In Python 3, you may use the sysconfig module instead:

    python3 -c 'import sysconfig; print(sysconfig.get_paths()["purelib"])'
   

2. The per user site-packages directory (PEP 370) is where Python installs your local packages:

    python -m site --user-site
   

   If this points to a non-existing directory check the exit status of Python and see python -m site --help for explanations.

   Hint: Running pip list --user or pip freeze --user gives you a list of all installed per user site-packages.

---

Practical Tips

• <package>.__path__ lets you identify the location(s) of a specific package: (details)

    $ python -c "import setuptools as _; print(_.__path__)"
    ['/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/setuptools']
  

• <module>.__file__ lets you identify the location of a specific module: (difference)

    $ python3 -c "import os as _; print(_.__file__)"
    /usr/lib/python3.6/os.py
  

• Run pip show <package> to show Debian-style package information:

    $ pip show pytest
    Name: pytest
    Version: 3.8.2
    Summary: pytest: simple powerful testing with Python
    Home-page: https://docs.pytest.org/en/latest/
    Author: Holger Krekel, Bruno Oliveira, Ronny Pfannschmidt, Floris Bruynooghe, Brianna Laugher, Florian Bruhin and others
    Author-email: None
    License: MIT license
    Location: /home/peter/.local/lib/python3.4/site-packages
    Requires: more-itertools, atomicwrites, setuptools, attrs, pathlib2, six, py, pluggy