Solution

Do not use with pip > 10.0!

My 50 cents for getting a pip freeze-like list from a Python script:

import pip
installed_packages = pip.get_installed_distributions()
installed_packages_list = sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version)
     for i in installed_packages])
print(installed_packages_list)

As a (too long) one liner:

sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version) for i in pip.get_installed_distributions()])

Giving:

['behave==1.2.4', 'enum34==1.0', 'flask==0.10.1', 'itsdangerous==0.24',
 'jinja2==2.7.2', 'jsonschema==2.3.0', 'markupsafe==0.23', 'nose==1.3.3',
 'parse-type==0.3.4', 'parse==1.6.4', 'prettytable==0.7.2', 'requests==2.3.0',
 'six==1.6.1', 'vioozer-metadata==0.1', 'vioozer-users-server==0.1',
 'werkzeug==0.9.4']

Scope

This solution applies to the system scope or to a virtual environment scope, and covers packages installed by setuptools, pip and (god forbid) easy_install.

My use case

I added the result of this call to my Flask server, so when I call it with http://example.com/exampleServer/environment I get the list of packages installed on the server's virtualenv. It makes debugging a whole lot easier.

Caveats

I have noticed a strange behaviour of this technique - when the Python interpreter is invoked in the same directory as a setup.py file, it does not list the package installed by setup.py.

Steps to reproduce:

Create a virtual environment

$ cd /tmp
$ virtualenv test_env
New python executable in test_env/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip...done.
$ source test_env/bin/activate
(test_env) $

Clone a Git repository with setup.py

(test_env) $ git clone https://github.com/behave/behave.git
Cloning into 'behave'...
remote: Reusing existing pack: 4350, done.
remote: Total 4350 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (4350/4350), 1.85 MiB | 418.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (2388/2388), done.
Checking connectivity... done.

We have behave's setup.py in /tmp/behave:

(test_env) $ ls /tmp/behave/setup.py
    /tmp/behave/setup.py

Install the Python package from the Git repository

(test_env) $ cd /tmp/behave && pip install .
running install
...
Installed /private/tmp/test_env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/enum34-1.0-py2.7.egg
Finished processing dependencies for behave==1.2.5a1

If we run the aforementioned solution from /tmp

>>> import pip
>>> sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version) for i in pip.get_installed_distributions()])
['behave==1.2.5a1', 'enum34==1.0', 'parse-type==0.3.4', 'parse==1.6.4', 'six==1.6.1']
>>> import os
>>> os.getcwd()
'/private/tmp'

If we run the aforementioned solution from /tmp/behave

>>> import pip
>>> sorted(["%s==%s" % (i.key, i.version) for i in pip.get_installed_distributions()])
['enum34==1.0', 'parse-type==0.3.4', 'parse==1.6.4', 'six==1.6.1']
>>> import os
>>> os.getcwd()
'/private/tmp/behave'

behave==1.2.5a1 is missing from the second example, because the working directory contains behave's setup.py file.

I could not find any reference to this issue in the documentation. Perhaps I shall open a bug for it.

help('modules') should do it for you.

in IPython :

In [1]: import                      #import press-TAB
Display all 631 possibilities? (y or n)
ANSI                   audiodev               markupbase
AptUrl                 audioop                markupsafe
ArgImagePlugin         avahi                  marshal
BaseHTTPServer         axi                    math
Bastion                base64                 md5
BdfFontFile            bdb                    mhlib
BmpImagePlugin         binascii               mimetools
BufrStubImagePlugin    binhex                 mimetypes
CDDB                   bisect                 mimify
CDROM                  bonobo                 mmap
CGIHTTPServer          brlapi                 mmkeys
Canvas                 bsddb                  modulefinder
CommandNotFound        butterfly              multifile
ConfigParser           bz2                    multiprocessing
ContainerIO            cPickle                musicbrainz2
Cookie                 cProfile               mutagen
Crypto                 cStringIO              mutex
CurImagePlugin         cairo                  mx
DLFCN                  calendar               netrc
DcxImagePlugin         cdrom                  new
Dialog                 cgi                    nis
DiscID                 cgitb                  nntplib
DistUpgrade            checkbox               ntpath