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What does “[sdist]” mean in PIP's list of outdated packages?

Suddenly, all Python packages reported as out of date by pip with

pip list --outdated

indicate [sdist], as in

awscli (Current: 1.7.19 Latest: 1.7.20 [sdist])
botocore (Current: 0.100.0 Latest: 0.101.0 [sdist])
jmespath (Current: 0.6.1 Latest: 0.6.2 [sdist])
plotly (Current: 1.6.14 Latest: 1.6.15 [sdist])

what does [sdist] mean?

Solution

  • In python packaging terms, "sdist" stands for "source distribution" and it's counterpart "bdist" stands for "binary distribution".

    Along with those distribution types there's also the older "egg" and the newer egg-like distribution called "wheel".

    In this case it's telling you that the newer version of your packages will be installed as a source distribution. If a binary distribution would be installed, you'd see [wheel] instead.

    This is a new feature, as of pip version 6.1.0.