How to install whl files in Anaconda

Anaconda whl Install

The whl format is a special zip format for Python packages. These are Anaconda whl install instructions. Here’s how to install a whl package in the Anaconda Python distribution from Continuum Analytics.

Download the 'wheel'

Find and download your whl file. In this example I’m going to be installing the ‘Shapely’ geometry package, available from here: https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#shapely You’ll want to pick the right version of Python - you probably want version 2.7, but check your Anaconda distribution. You’ll also need to pick between 32- or 64-bit.

Install With Pip

Anaconda prefers to use its own ‘conda’ package manager, but it’s also possible to install packages using pip - the PyPA recommended tool for installing Python packages. See a comparison of the package managers here. Once you’ve downloaded the correct wheel file, open up the ‘Anaconda Command Prompt’ and navigate to the folder containing the downloaded wheel. To install this Shapely whl file I run:

pip install Shapely‑1.5.5‑cp27‑none‑win32.whl

which will install the Shapely package to somewhere like:

C:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\shapely

To check which packages you have already installed (with pip), run

pip list

or

pip freeze