As mentioned in README.rst, on most computers python-exiv2 can be installed with a simple pip command:
C:\>pip install exiv2 Collecting exiv2 Downloading exiv2-0.17.0-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl.metadata (7.3 kB) Downloading exiv2-0.17.0-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl (8.5 MB) ---------------------------------------- 8.5/8.5 MB 963.3 kB/s eta 0:00:00 Installing collected packages: exiv2 Successfully installed exiv2-0.17.0
If this doesn't work, or you need a non-standard installation, there are other ways to install python-exiv2.
Contents
In the example above, pip installs a "binary wheel". This is pre-compiled and includes a copy of the libexiv2 library, which makes installation quick and easy. Wheels for python-exiv2 are available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS with Python versions from 3.6 to 3.12.
If your computer already has libexiv2 installed (typically by your operating system's "package manager") then pip might be able to compile python-exiv2 to use it. First you need to check what version of python-exiv2 you have:
$ pkg-config --modversion exiv2 0.27.5
If this command fails it might be because you don't have the "development headers" of libexiv2 installed.
On some operating systems these are a separate package, with a name like exiv2-dev.
If the pkg-config command worked, and your version of libexiv2 is 0.27.0 or later, then you should be able to install python-exiv2 from source:
$ pip3 install --user exiv2 --no-binary :all:
Collecting exiv2
Downloading exiv2-0.17.0.tar.gz (1.6 MB)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1.6/1.6 MB 870.6 kB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing build dependencies ... done
Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
Installing backend dependencies ... done
Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done
Building wheels for collected packages: exiv2
Building wheel for exiv2 (pyproject.toml) ... done
Created wheel for exiv2: filename=exiv2-0.17.0-cp310-cp310-linux_x86_64.whl size=4586091 sha256=09d7f0d2a3654c1cf4bb944ed04d594a92e6f6eaa8a1a0acd5fa45cdf8746ffd
Stored in directory: /home/jim/.cache/pip/wheels/e5/18/69/fc2199ac2c24b13e88a56c4660720fea109d69b0747e05eb1d
Successfully built exiv2
Installing collected packages: exiv2
Successfully installed exiv2-0.17.0
This will take some time as python-exiv2 has to be compiled, and some of its modules are quite large.
If you want to see what's happening you can use the -v option to increase pip's verbosity.
If you change your installed libexiv2, for example as part of an operating system update, then your installation of python-exiv2 will probably stop working. If this happens you need to reinstall python-exiv2 to use the new version of libexiv2:
$ pip3 install --user exiv2 --no-binary :all: --force-reinstall
Note the use of --force-reinstall to make pip reinstall python-exiv2 even if the latest version is already installed.
The following installation procedures all require access to the python-exiv2 source code.
You can download this from GitHub (use the most recent release) or, if you are familiar with git, you could "clone" the GitHub repo.
The rest of this document assumes you have the source code and are in your python-exiv2 directory.
You may also need to install the wheel package used to build Python wheels:
$ pip3 install --user wheel
The Exiv2 project provides builds for several operating systems.
Download and unpack the appropriate one for your operating system, then you can compile python-exiv2 to use this source.
Note the use of the EXIV2_ROOT environment variable to select the source:
$ EXIV2_ROOT=../exiv2-0.28.3-Linux64/ pip3 wheel . Processing /home/jim/python-exiv2 Installing build dependencies ... done Getting requirements to build wheel ... done Installing backend dependencies ... done Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done Building wheels for collected packages: exiv2 Building wheel for exiv2 (pyproject.toml) ... done Created wheel for exiv2: filename=exiv2-0.17.0-cp310-cp310-linux_x86_64.whl size=11839757 sha256=a7de01eadbf9bf608ff07cda506db1453fcb91c9b55cc9d5cbc93546ee6c52c7 Stored in directory: /home/jim/.cache/pip/wheels/b6/c0/a3/68cf7238e1b7de98ca8bbce0f5f3f0bf6b85f9b6468a097cca Successfully built exiv2
As before, you can use pip's -v option to see what's happening as it compiles each python-exiv2 module.
If this worked you can now install the wheel you've just built:
$ pip3 install --user exiv2-0.17.0-cp310-cp310-linux_x86_64.whl Processing ./exiv2-0.17.0-cp310-cp310-linux_x86_64.whl Installing collected packages: exiv2 Successfully installed exiv2-0.17.0
The above instructions apply to Unix-like systems such as Linux, MacOS, and MinGW. However, it is also possible to build python-exiv2 on Windows. There is a lot of confusing and contradictory information available about building Python extensions on Windows. The following is what has worked for me.
First you need to install a compiler. Python versions 3.5 onwards need Visual C++ 14.x. Fortunately Microsoft provides a free Visual C++ 14.2 standalone. Download and install this first.
Build a wheel:
C:\Users\Jim\python-exiv2>set EXIV2_ROOT=..\exiv2-0.28.3-2019msvc64 C:\Users\Jim\python-exiv2>pip wheel . Processing c:\users\jim\python-exiv2 Installing build dependencies ... done Getting requirements to build wheel ... done Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done Building wheels for collected packages: exiv2 Building wheel for exiv2 (pyproject.toml) ... done Created wheel for exiv2: filename=exiv2-0.17.0-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl size=8448722 sha256=0408f9c99a1ca772dc62ec6689dc6ce8dd8d7027d7cb8808a91e8312590c498d Stored in directory: c:\users\jim\appdata\local\pip\cache\wheels\a3\3b\d4\d35463afd5940a14f17983a106ed52ffafc07877192bcc881a Successfully built exiv2
Install the wheel:
C:\Users\Jim\python-exiv2>pip install exiv2-0.17.0-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl Processing c:\users\jim\python-exiv2\exiv2-0.17.0-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl Installing collected packages: exiv2 Successfully installed exiv2-0.17.0
In some circumstances a pre-built libexiv2 supplied by the exiv2 project may not be suitable. For example, the Linux build might use newer libraries than are installed on your computer.
Building libexiv2 requires CMake. This should be available from your operating system's package manager. If not (e.g. on Windows) then download an installer from the CMake web site. You will also need to install the "development headers" of zlib and expat. Exiv2 provides some build instructions, but I don't follow them exactly.
Download and unpack the exiv2 source, then change to its directory. Then configure the build:
$ cmake --preset linux-release -D CONAN_AUTO_INSTALL=OFF \ > -D EXIV2_BUILD_SAMPLES=OFF -D EXIV2_BUILD_UNIT_TESTS=OFF \ > -D EXIV2_BUILD_EXIV2_COMMAND=OFF -D EXIV2_ENABLE_NLS=ON
(The cmake options enable localisation and turn off building bits we don't need.)
If this worked you can now compile and install (to the local folder) libexiv2:
$ cmake --build build-linux-release --config Release $ cmake --install build-linux-release --config Release
Back in your python-exiv2 directory, you can build the wheel as before, but using your new build:
$ EXIV2_ROOT=../exiv2-0.28.3/build-linux-release/install pip3 wheel . Processing /home/jim/python-exiv2 Installing build dependencies ... done Getting requirements to build wheel ... done Installing backend dependencies ... done Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done Building wheels for collected packages: exiv2 Building wheel for exiv2 (pyproject.toml) ... done Created wheel for exiv2: filename=exiv2-0.17.0-cp310-cp310-linux_x86_64.whl size=11979058 sha256=85cf8d78bd8d6b82de6aae6fd8bb58ffb76a381cc921bc1bd77fbfb77e46e2dc Stored in directory: /home/jim/.cache/pip/wheels/b6/c0/a3/68cf7238e1b7de98ca8bbce0f5f3f0bf6b85f9b6468a097cca Successfully built exiv2
Then install the wheel as before.
Once again, doing this on Windows is just a bit more complicated.
The dependencies zlib, expat, and libiconv are installed with conan. First install conan with pip:
C:\Users\Jim\exiv2-0.28.3>pip install conan==1.59.0
Then configure CMake:
C:\Users\Jim\exiv2-0.28.3>cmake --preset msvc -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ^ More? -D EXIV2_BUILD_SAMPLES=OFF -D EXIV2_BUILD_EXIV2_COMMAND=OFF ^ More? -D EXIV2_BUILD_UNIT_TESTS=OFF -G "Visual Studio 16 2019"
(The ^ characters are used to split this very long command.)
If that worked you can compile and install libexiv2:
C:\Users\Jim\exiv2-0.28.3>cmake --build build-msvc --config Release C:\Users\Jim\exiv2-0.28.3>cmake --install build-msvc --config Release
Back in your python-exiv2 directory, build a wheel using your newly compiled libexiv2:
C:\Users\Jim\python-exiv2>set EXIV2_ROOT=..\exiv2-0.28.3\build-msvc\install C:\Users\Jim\python-exiv2>pip wheel . Processing c:\users\jim\python-exiv2 Installing build dependencies ... done Getting requirements to build wheel ... done Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done Building wheels for collected packages: exiv2 Building wheel for exiv2 (pyproject.toml) ... done Created wheel for exiv2: filename=exiv2-0.17.0-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl size=8428068 sha256=c9c1364c0aaddb1455b2272cbd9ee64bc22d290f13eb7dc289b2ee67dcda87f3 Stored in directory: c:\users\jim\appdata\local\pip\cache\wheels\a3\3b\d4\d35463afd5940a14f17983a106ed52ffafc07877192bcc881a Successfully built exiv2
Then install the wheel as before.
You should only need to run SWIG if your installed libexiv2 has extras, such as Windows Unicode paths, that aren't available with the SWIG generated files included with python-exiv2. Note that SWIG version 4.1.0 or later is required to process the highly complex libexiv2 header files.
The build_swig.py script has one required parameter - the path of the exiv2 include directory.
If you've downloaded or build exiv2 you can run build_swig.py on the local copy:
$ python3 utils/build_swig.py ../exiv2-0.28.3/build-linux-release/install/include/
Or you can run it on the system installed libexiv2:
$ python3 utils/build_swig.py /usr/include
After running build_swig.py you can build and install a wheel as before:
$ EXIV2_ROOT=../exiv2-0.28.3/build-linux-release/install pip3 wheel . $ pip3 install --user exiv2-0.17.0-cp310-cp310-linux_x86_64.whl