如何安装特定 python package 的零件？

Question

I am looking at a code that uses acicobra package. Acicobra library is 670MB. The python code uses only a few functions from acicobra library. Is there a way to install only the required modules from this acicobra library and not the entire library? If I install the entire library, my docker image size gets inflated because of this gigantic library.

root@1f5edb150a78:/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages# ls -l |grep -v dist-info|du -sh *|sort -hr
659M    cobra

These are the only references to cobra in the python code

from cobra.mit.access import MoDirectory
from cobra.mit.session import LoginSession, LoginError
from cobra.mit.request import ClassQuery, DnQuery, QueryError

As you can see, the code is referencing only 3 modules out of the entire library.

I am looking for ways to avoid installing the entire library to limit the size of the dockerimage

Answer 1

Not unless it relies on other smaller sublibraries that you can fetch.

You could check out the code and see if you can create your own smaller python package.
But 90% of the time you'll go down a depecdency chain and need the full library anyway.
Also check the license if commercial use.

This should be the correct github for the source:
https://github.com/datacenter/cobra