How to upgrade all Python packages with pip

There isn't a built-in flag yet, but you can use:

pip list --outdated --format=freeze | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1  | xargs -n1 pip install -U

For older versions of pip:

pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1  | xargs -n1 pip install -U

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• The grep is to skip editable ("-e") package definitions, as suggested by @jawache. (Yes, you could replace grep+cut with sed or awk or perl or...).

• The -n1 flag for xargs prevents stopping everything if updating one package fails (thanks @andsens).

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Note: there are infinite potential variations for this. I'm trying to keep this answer short and simple, but please do suggest variations in the comments!

To upgrade all local packages, you can install pip-review:

$ pip install pip-review

After that, you can either upgrade the packages interactively:

$ pip-review --local --interactive

Or automatically:

$ pip-review --local --auto

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pip-review is a fork of pip-tools. See pip-tools issue mentioned by @knedlsepp. pip-review package works but pip-tools package no longer works. pip-review is looking for new maintainer.

pip-review works on Windows since version 0.5.

You can use the following Python code. Unlike pip freeze, this will not print warnings and FIXME errors. For pip < 10.0.1

import pip
from subprocess import call

packages = [dist.project_name for dist in pip.get_installed_distributions()]
call("pip install --upgrade " + ' '.join(packages), shell=True)

For pip >= 10.0.1

import pkg_resources
from subprocess import call

packages = [dist.project_name for dist in pkg_resources.working_set]
call("pip install --upgrade " + ' '.join(packages), shell=True)