Developing a FreeCAD Plugin Using PyFlow: Issues with Python Interpreter and Module Import

Question

I'm working on developing a plugin for FreeCAD that leverages the PyFlow library. To clarify and avoid an XYZ problem, I aim to create a FreeCAD plugin using PyFlow.

For development, I face a dilemma:

• I can't find the Freecad module using a separate Python interpreter when installing it via pip.
• Using FreeCAD's bundled Python interpreter, I seem to successfully install packages (like PyFlow) using FreeCAD's pip. However, I can't locate the installed Pyflow folder, nor can I import PyFlow within the interpreter.

FreeCAD's Python interpreter apparently installs packages to a location I cannot determine. I've tried checking the site-packages directory, but the Pyflow folder isn't present.

Has anyone experienced similar issues, or can you offer guidance on correctly setting up the environment for developing a FreeCAD plugin using external libraries like PyFlow?

the pip install freecad retunrs

ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement freecad (from versions: none)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for freecad

I checked the folders:

C:\Users\Foo\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages
C:\Program Files\FreeCAD 0.20\bin\Lib\site-packages

I see the folder pyflow-0.3.1.dist-info, but it does not contain the relevant files, such as an __init__.py file or a PyFlow subdirectory.

I tried purging with

"C:\Program Files\FreeCAD 0.20\bin\python.exe" -m pip cache purge

and reinstalling with

"C:\Program Files\FreeCAD 0.20\bin\python.exe" -m pip install --force-reinstall pyflow

that returns

Defaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeable
Collecting pyflow
Using cached pyflow-0.3.1-py3-none-win_amd64.whl (5.3 MB)
Installing collected packages: pyflow
Successfully installed pyflow-0.3.1