pipe

pipe (Pipe Indexes Packages Efficiently) is a fast, terminal-based PyPI package search tool written in Rust. It helps you quickly find Python packages, check their monthly download statistics, and see if they are already installed in your local environment.

Features

Fast Local Search
Searches an embedded dataset of the top 15,000 packages to reduce network latency.

Concurrent Metadata Fetching
Uses scoped threads to retrieve package information in parallel.

Relevance-Based Sorting
Ranks matches by download count, exact name matches, and prefix matches.

Derivative Filtering
Hides sub-packages (e.g., foo-bar) if the base package (foo) is already matched. Use --no-filter to show all.

Full Index Access
Supports multi-term queries and full scans of the PyPI Simple Index via the -s flag.

Automatic Fallback
Automatically performs a full index search if no popular packages match the query.

Local Environment Detection
Displays monthly download counts and checks if packages are installed using pip list.

Terminal Support
Uses ANSI colors and respects the NO_COLOR environment variable.

Installation

Ensure you have Rust and Cargo installed, then you can build and install the tool from source:

cargo install --path .

Usage

pipe [OPTIONS] <QUERY>...

Examples

Search for a package by name:

pipe requests

Search for a package with multiple terms (all terms must appear somewhere in the name):

pipe foo bar
# This will match packages like `foo-bar`, `foobar`, or `something-foo-something-bar`.

Perform a full search across the entire PyPI index:

pipe -s django

Increase the limit of results shown (default is 10):

pipe -l 20 flask

Show all derivative packages (disable smart filtering):

pipe --no-filter asyncio

Disable ANSI colors in the output:

pipe --no-color requests
# Or use the environment variable
NO_COLOR=1 pipe requests

Options

• <QUERY>...: Package name or search terms.
• -s, --search: Search all PyPI projects via the Simple Index.
• -l, --limit <LIMIT>: Maximum number of results to show (default: 10).
• --no-filter: Disable filtering of derivative packages.
• --no-color: Disable ANSI colors.
• -h, --help: Print help information.
• -V, --version: Print version information.

Acknowledgments

This tool uses download statistics from hugovk/top-pypi-packages.