TIL: Undocumented feature of the week: $PIP_DOWNLOAD_CACHE

Use Python? You should be using Pip. A replacement for easy_install, that supports uninstalling and plays nice with virtualenv. An apt-get for Python packages, if you will.

It has a marvellous undocumented feature. Set the environment variable PIP_DOWNLOAD_CACHE to prevent re-downloading the same packages repeatedly when setting up environments on the same machine:

> set | grep PIP
PIP_DOWNLOAD_CACHE=C:\Documents and Settings\jhartley\.pip_download_cache

> pip install mock
Downloading/unpacking mock
Creating supposed download cache at C:\Documents and Settings\jhartley\.pip_download_cache
 Downloading mock-0.7.0b2.zip (242Kb): 242Kb downloaded
 Storing download in cache at c:\documents and settings\jhartley\.pip_download_cache\http%3a%2f%2fpypi.python.org%2fpackages%2fsource%2fm%2fmock%2fmock-0.7.0b2.zip
[snip]
Successfully installed mock

> pip uninstall mock
[snip]
 Successfully uninstalled mock

> pip install mock
Downloading/unpacking mock
 Using download cache from C:\Documents and Settings\jhartley\.pip_download_cache\http%3A%2F%2Fpypi.python.org%2Fpackages%2Fsource%2Fm%2Fmock%2Fmock-0.7.0b2.zip
[snip]
Successfully installed mock

(This text is copied from my unholy bastardised shell of choice at work, Windows CMD shell with Cygwin binaries foremost on the PATH.)

Using the download cache like this is substantially faster. Exactly what you need if you're continually setting up environments under various version of Python for testing or what-have-you.

The directory is created if it doesn't exist. Network access is still required when installing like this, presumably for the version checks.

Thanks to the irrepressible fuzzyman for bringing this to my attention.