Installation
Basic installation
Most users on Linux, macOS or Windows with x64 systems should use pip
to
install pikepdf in their current Python environment (such as your project’s
virtual environment).
pip install pikepdf
Use pip install --user pikepdf
to install the package for the current user
only. Use pip install pikepdf
to install to a virtual environment.
Linux users: If you have an older version of pip
, such as the one that ships
with Ubuntu 18.04, this command will attempt to compile the project instead of
installing the wheel. If you want to get the binary wheel, upgrade pip
with:
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py && python3 get-pip.py
pip --version # should be 20.0 or newer
pip install pikepdf
Binary wheel availability
3.7 |
3.8 |
3.9 |
3.10 |
PyPy 3.7 |
PyPy 3.8 |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
macOS Intel |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
⏳ |
macOS Apple Silicon |
❌ |
❌ |
🍏 |
🍏 |
❌ |
⏳ |
Windows 64-bit |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
⏳ |
⏳ |
Windows 32-bit |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
⏳ |
⏳ |
manylinux2014 64-bit |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
⏳ |
manylinux2014 32-bit |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
⏳ |
musllinux 64-bit |
⏳ |
⏳ |
⏳ |
⏳ |
⏳ |
⏳ |
musllinux 32-bit |
⏳ |
⏳ |
⏳ |
⏳ |
⏳ |
⏳ |
✅ wheels are available
🍏 wheels are available for Apple Silicon but their release may lag a few days
❌ wheels are not likely to be produced for this platform and Python version
⏳ we are waiting on a third party to implement better support for this configuration
Binary wheels should work on most systems, provided a recent version of pip is used to install them. Old versions of pip, especially before 20.0, may fail to check appropriate versions.
macOS 10.14 or newer is typically required for binary wheels. Older versions may work if compiled from source.
Windows 7 or newer is required. Windows wheels include a recent copy of libqpdf.
Most Linux distributions support manylinux2014, with the notable except of Alpine Linux, and older Linux distributions that do not have C++17-capable compilers. The Linux wheels include recent copies of libqpdf, libjpeg, and zlib.
Source builds are usually possible where binary wheels are available.
Platform support
Some platforms include versions of pikepdf that are distributed by the system
package manager (such as apt
). These versions may lag behind the version
distributed with PyPI, but may be convenient for users that cannot use binary
wheels.

Packaged fish.
Debian, Ubuntu and other APT-based distributions
apt install pikepdf
Fedora
dnf install python-pikepdf
Alpine Linux
apk add py3-pikepdf
Installing on FreeBSD
pkg install py38-pikepdf
To attempt a manual install, try something like:
pkg install python3 py38-lxml py38-pip py38-pybind11 qpdf
pip install --user pikepdf
This procedure is known to work on FreeBSD 11.3, 12.0, 12.1-RELEASE and 13.0-CURRENT. It has not been tested on other versions.
Building from source
Requirements
pikepdf requires:
a C++17 compliant compiler - roughly GCC 7+, clang 6+, or MSVC 19+
libqpdf 10.6.2 or higher from the QPDF project.
On Linux the library and headers for libqpdf must be installed because pikepdf compiles code against it and links to it.
Check Repology for QPDF to see if a recent version of QPDF is available for your platform. Otherwise you must build QPDF from source. (Consider using the binary wheels, which bundle the required version of libqpdf.)
Note
pikepdf should be built with the same compiler and linker as libqpdf; to be
precise both must use the same C++ ABI. On some platforms, setup.py may
not pick the correct compiler so one may need to set environment variables
CC
and CXX
to redirect it. If the wrong compiler is selected,
import pikepdf._qpdf
will throw an ImportError
about a missing
symbol.
GCC or Clang, linking to system libraries
To link to system libraries (the ones installed by your package manager, such
apt
, brew
or dnf
:
Clone the pikepdf repository
Install libjpeg, zlib and libqpdf on your platform, including headers
If desired, activate a virtual environment
Run
pip install .
GCC or Clang and linking to user libraries
setuptools will normally attempt to link against your system libraries. If you wish to link pikepdf against a different version of the QPDF (say, because pikepdf requires a newer version than your operating system has), then you might do something like:
Install the development headers for libjpeg and zlib (e.g.
apt install libjpeg-dev
)Build qpdf from source and run
make install
to install it to/usr/local
Clone the pikepdf repository
From the pikepdf directory, run
env CXXFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/libqpdf LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib \ pip install .
On Windows (requires Visual Studio 2015)
pikepdf requires a C++17 compliant compiler (i.e. Visual Studio 2015 on
Windows). See our continuous integration build script in .appveyor.yml
for detailed and current instructions. Or use the wheels which save this pain.
These instructions require the precompiled binary qpdf.dll
. See the QPDF
documentation if you also need to build this DLL from source. Both should be
built with the same compiler. You may not mix and match MinGW and Visual C++
for example.
Running a regular pip install
command will detect the
version of the compiler used to build Python and attempt to build the
extension with it. We must force the use of Visual Studio 2015.
Clone this repository.
In a command prompt, run:
%VS140COMNTOOLS%\..\..\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x64 set DISTUTILS_USE_SDK=1 set MSSdk=1
Download qpdf-10.6.3-bin-msvc64.zip from the QPDF releases page.
Extract
bin\*.dll
(all the DLLs, both QPDF’s and the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime library) from the zip file above, and copy it to thesrc/pikepdf
folder in the repository.Run
pip install .
in the root directory of the repository.
Note
The user compiling pikepdf
to must have registry editing rights on the
machine to be able to run the vcvarsall.bat
script.
Building against a QPDF source tree
Follow these steps to build pikepdf against a different version of QPDF, rather than the one provided with your operating system. This may be useful if you need a more recent version of QPDF than your operating system package manager provides, and you do not want to use Python wheels.
Set the environment variable
QPDF_SOURCE_TREE
to the location of the QPDF source tree.Build QPDF, by running
make
. Refer to the QPDF installation instructions for further options and details.On Linux, modify
LD_LIBRARY_PATH
, prepending the path where the QPDF build produceslibqpdfXX.so
. This might be something like$QPDF_SOURCE_TREE/.build/libs/libqpdfXX.so
. On macOS, locate the equivalent variable isDYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
. On Windows, no action is needed. Generally, what you are doing here is telling the runtime dynamic linker to use the custom compiled version of QPDF instead of the system version.Build pikepdf. On Windows, locate the QPDF .dll files and copy them into the folder alongside the file named
_qpdf*.dll
.
Note that the Python wheels for pikepdf currently compile their own version of QPDF and several of its dependencies to ensure the wheels have the latest version. You can also refer to the GitHub Actions YAML files for build steps.
Building the documentation
Documentation is generated using Sphinx and you are currently reading it. To regenerate it:
pip install pikepdf[docs]
cd docs
make html
PyPy3 support
PyPy3 3.7 is currently supported, these being the latest versions of PyPy as of this writing. Windows PyPy wheels are not supported because cibuildwheel does not support Windows 64-bit PyPy. We have not checked if source builds work.
PyPy3 is not more performant than CPython for pikepdf, because the core of pikepdf is already written in C++. The benefit is for applications that want to use PyPy for improved performance of native Python and also want to use pikepdf.