Python Forum

I see that pip's cache in ~/cache/pip has a wheel and http directory. They take about 3 G which I would like to reclaim. They are in a dreadful numerical obfuscation which I loathe.
I can rescue the wheels and move them to another drive, if ever I should need them. Is there any way I can make anything useful of the http files?

I am assuming that with the latest version I CAN delete the cache with no harm done. Is this still true?

In ots present format iot is personally useless, but i do not know what the system needs, or wants. What was true a few years ago may no longer hold....

There shouldn't be anything in your cache after an install.
I'm guessing that the author didn't properly clean-up after an install.
Should be OK to delete.

I've been using :
pip3 install xxx yyy zzz (multiple packages)

It seems to hold its 'wheels' there, which I assume is similar to the CPAN/Build directories. I'm still installing 3.7 (on Buster, and Win7), so they're OK for now, but wehn done I will probably use one of the mirror modules to make a repo of PyPi.

Another question, related to package management:
In Perl there is a hierarchial %PerlPath% with site dirs searched in precedence. For example a site module will never override a system module with the same name. With that in mind I can add entire site dirs with modules from previous versions, and set the version in the script if there is a conflict.
Is there anything like this in python?

OK I see now that the Debian distro puts its modules in /usr/lib, which is first in the 'python-path' . The Pypi modules are under /usr/local lib.

Which still begs the question as to the nature of the /wheels and /http dirs in ~/.cache/pip

I assume the /wheels is like the CPAN/Buld dirs: disposable. I have no clue, however as to what the /http dir is. It is totally obfuscated, with what appears to be binary files in an unknown format.