What do square brackets mean in pip installation?

Question

I see more and more of these commands:

$ pip install "splinter[django]"

What do these square brackets do?

Answer 1

The syntax you use is:

pip install "project[extra]"

---

In your case, you are a installingpackage splinterin which support is added django. Square brackets ( []) is not a specific syntax, but just a convention. In fact, you install a package with the name: "splinter[django]".

Explanation from @chetner:

pip install splinter django splinter django. splinter[django], , splinter, django. , django, , splinter , .

Answer 2

, setuptools:

https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/setuptools.html#declaring-extras-optional-features-with-their-own-dependencies

"" , . , PDF, ReportLab, reStructuredText, . ""...

Answer 3

This is exactly the list from the setup.pyfile for the project in question :

"django": ["Django>=1.7.11;python_version<'3.0'", "Django>=2.0.6;python_version>'3.3'", "lxml>=2.3.6", "cssselect", "six"],