How To Specify Pip Options In Pycharm For Installing From Requirements.txt

To install Python packages from behind a corporate proxy, it is sometimes necessary to add options to pip, such as --proxy or --cert. How to specify a proxy in PyCharm is explained

Solution 1:

You can download the CA cert inserted by your corporate firewall and install it to pip's keystore. Below is the process I used, but I'm sure those more adept at cert formats/manipulation can improve it:

PLEASE NOTE: Pip's cacerts.pem file will be overwritten whenever pip is upgraded, so the company cert will need to be re-inserted.

Step 1. Identify the correct keystore. If you are using a virtual environment, the location of the keystore used by pip when it is activated should be C:\PATH\TO\VENV\Lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\certifi\cacert.pem

NOTE: Unlike most keystores that I have dealt with (mostly while trying to get JetBrains products to work behind corpo firewalls), this one is plain text. More on this in Step 3.

Step 2. Download the cert. Using Firefox (there are many ways to do this), go to the URL that precedes the error (something like https://pypi.org/simple/, or https://pypi.python.org/simple/). Click on the Lock > Show connection details > More information. On Page Info window, Click View Certificate > Details Tab. Export the top-level cert as .crt/.pem. Click back to the General tab, it may be needed in Step 3.

Step 3. Normally, you could just use a keytool command like keytool -import -alias key-alias -file "C:\path\to\exported\key.der" -keystore "C:\Path\to\keystore\.PyCharm2018.3\system\tasks\cacerts",but when you do, you get the following keytool error: java.security.KeyStoreException: Unrecognized keystore format: null. It turns out you can just copy the plain text cert exported in Step 2 directly into the keystore.

You don't need to include any header information, just from -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- to -----END CERTIFICATE-----. However, it may be beneficial in the future if someone (you) has to look at this keystore again, so you can copy it from the General Tab mentioned above.