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Install Python Packages Offline (Windows)

This assumes you have installed the Python (eg, 3.11.11) in the destination Offline computer. Also the python version has to be same in both the computers (where you dowload the packages and where you install them).

Prerequisites / To Do​

This need to be done on a Windows machine itself, similar to your offline computer, but with open internet

  1. Make a list of required packages in a file, eg requirements.txt

  2. Make a dedicated folder for this work.

    • Make one virtual env (python -m venv offline_pkgs_env) and activate it.

    • Make a folder for storing the packages, eg: offline_packages

Install Packages​

In the activated venv, do

pip download -r requirements.txt -d offline_packages
See a possible error

Make sure to have same Python version and OS in your downloading env and you destination env. Otherwise you will have error like downloading Python 3.9 packages in Linux for Python 3.11.11 Windows destination

ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pillow==10.4.0 (from versions: none) 1.540

ERROR: No matching distribution found for pillow==10.4.0

When we check the downloaded packages we have 'pillow-10.4.0-cp39-cp39-manylinux_2_28_x86_64.whl' but see the 'cp39' and 'manylinux', it is for Python 3.9 in Linux and not Python 3.11.11 in Windows.

In the offline_packages folder you can view the downloaded .whl / wheel files of all libs you listed in requirements.txt

Transferring offline packages​

The downloaded package files (offline_packages folder) can be transferred to offline computer / destination using a USB or Shared Drive.

Installing packages offline​

  1. Copy the downloaded packages folder (offline_packages) to the destination computer.

  2. Copy the requirements.txt file to the destination computer.

  3. Make a venv in the destination computer to make place to install the offline packages.

python -m venv app_env

Then install the packages offline using

pip install --no-index --find-links=offline_packages -r requirements.txt

here offline_packages is the folder name where the downloaded files of libs exists.

For building Docker Images​

Copy locally downloaded dependencies, this offline_packages is the same folder where we downloaded the files

COPY offline_packages /app/offline_packages

Copy requirements file

COPY requirements.txt /app/requirements.txt

Run the same pip install command above

RUN pip install --no-cache-dir --no-index --find-links=offline_packages -r requirements.txt && rm -rf offline_packages

  • If your workdir is different, you can do /app/offline_packages, /app/requirements.txt

  • If pip happens to cache something, with --no-cache-dir it will not


So with this method

  1. You can speed up the docker creation process

  2. You don't need to do (CA Certificate copying to docker image)

COPY ca_cert.pem /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ca_cert.crt
RUN update-ca-certificates

ENV REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=/etc/ssl/certs/ca_cert.crt
ENV SSL_CERT_FILE=/etc/ssl/certs/ca_cert.crt