Today I needed to setup pip in a python virtual environment inside a Docker container to quickly install a couple dependencies for testing without doing a full rebuild. Unfortunately, pip wasn’t included as a dependency for the docker container because additional python dependencies didn’t normally need to be installed during regular operation. But, luckily for us there’s a python package for that. Enter stage left, ensurepip.

Activate your virtual environment wherever it resides e.g. source ./.venv/bin/active and make a call to the ensurepip module with python -m ensurepip. You should get output that looks something like this:

Looking in links: /tmp/tmpznyyt9jn
Processing /tmp/tmpznyyt9jn/pip-26.0.1-py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: pip
Successfully installed pip-26.0.1

There you go, pip ready and rarin’ to go