how can I install "pip wheel" on a machine without internet connection?

Question

We have a prod server machine without internet connection, and I would like to be able to execute "pip wheel".

I've downloaded virtualenv-1.9.tar.gz copied to the prod server and extracted it. First, why isn't pip wheel available right away?

[ihadanny@lvshdc2en0012 ~]$ ./virtualenv-1.9/virtualenv.py venv/v1
New python executable in venv/v1/bin/python
Installing setuptools............done.
Installing pip...............done.
[ihadanny@lvshdc2en0012 ~]$ source venv/v1/bin/activate
(v1)[ihadanny@lvshdc2en0012 ~]$ which pip
~/venv/v1/bin/pip
(v1)[ihadanny@lvshdc2en0012 ~]$ pip wheel
ERROR: unknown command "wheel" - maybe you meant "help"

I've proceeded to download and copy wheel-0.24.0.tar.gz, but that only installed wheel, not pip wheel:

(v1)[ihadanny@lvshdc2en0012 ~]$ pip install wheel-0.24.0.tar.gz
Unpacking ./wheel-0.24.0.tar.gz
  Running setup.py egg_info for package from file:///x/home/ihadanny/wheel-0.24.0.tar.gz
    no previously-included directories found matching 'wheel/test/*/dist'
    no previously-included directories found matching 'wheel/test/*/build'
Installing collected packages: wheel
  Running setup.py install for wheel
    no previously-included directories found matching 'wheel/test/*/dist'
    no previously-included directories found matching 'wheel/test/*/build'
    Installing wheel script to /x/home/ihadanny/venv/v1/bin
Successfully installed wheel
Cleaning up...
(v1)[ihadanny@lvshdc2en0012 ~]$ pip wheel
ERROR: unknown command "wheel" - maybe you meant "help"

EDIT: I also tried pip install wheel to no-avail

(v1)[ihadanny@lvshdc2en0012 ~]$ pip install wheel
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): wheel in ./venv/v1/lib/python2.6/site-packages
Cleaning up...
(v1)[ihadanny@lvshdc2en0012 ~]$ pip wheel
ERROR: unknown command "wheel" - maybe you meant "help"

and of course upgrade can't work (no internet connection...)

(v1)[ihadanny@lvshdc2en0012 ~]$ pip install --upgrade wheel Cannot fetch index base URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/

what am I missing?

Answer 1

You can still use that virtual env if you update pip, but better to update a to the latest virtualenv. If you don't have a connection download the wheel source package, extract it and use:

pip install wheel-0.24.0/

Don't omit the final slash.