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micropython-lib

This is a repository of packages designed to be useful for writing MicroPython applications.

The packages here fall into categories corresponding to the four top-level directories:

• python-stdlib: Compatible versions of modules from The Python Standard Library. These should be drop-in replacements for the corresponding Python modules, although many have reduced functionality or missing methods or classes (which may not be an issue for most cases).

• python-ecosys: Compatible, but reduced-functionality versions of packages from the wider Python ecosystem. For example, a package that might be found in the Python Package Index.

• micropython: MicroPython-specific packages that do not have equivalents in other Python environments. This includes drivers for hardware (e.g. sensors, peripherals, or displays), libraries to work with embedded functionality (e.g. bluetooth), or MicroPython-specific packages that do not have equivalents in CPython.

• unix-ffi: These packages are specifically for the MicroPython Unix port and provide access to operating-system and third-party libraries via FFI, or functionality that is not useful for non-Unix ports.

Usage

To install a micropython-lib package, there are four main options. For more information see the Package management documentation documentation.

On a network-enabled device

As of MicroPython v1.20 (and nightly builds since October 2022), boards with WiFi and Ethernet support include the mip package manager.

>>> import mip
>>> mip.install("package-name")

Using mpremote from your PC

mpremote is the officially-supported tool for interacting with a MicroPython device and, since v0.4.0, support for installing micropython-lib packages is provided by using the mip command.

$ mpremote connect /dev/ttyUSB0 mip install package-name

See the mpremote documentation.

Freeze into your firmware

If you are building your own firmware, all packages in this repository include a manifest.py that can be included into your board manifest via the require() command. See Manifest files for more information.

Copy the files manually

Many micropython-lib packages are just single-file modules, and you can quickly get started by copying the relevant Python file to your device. For example, to add the base64 library, you can directly copy python-stdlib/base64/base64.py to the lib directory on your device.

This can be done using mpremote, for example:

$ mpremote connect /dev/ttyUSB0 cp python-stdlib/base64/base64.py :/lib

For packages that are implemented as a package directory, you'll need to copy the directory instead. For example, to add collections.defaultdict, copy collections/collections/__init__.py and collections-defaultdict/collections/defaultdict.py to a directory named lib/collections on your device.

Note that unlike the other three approaches based on mip or manifest.py, you will need to manually resolve dependencies. You can inspect the relevant manifest.py file to view the list of dependencies for a given package.

Installing packages from forks

It is possible to use the mpremote mip install or mip.install() methods to install packages built from a fork of micropython-lib, if the fork's owner has opted in.

This can be useful to install packages from a pending Pull Request, for example.

First, the owner of the fork must opt-in as described under Publishing packages from forks.

After this has happened, each time someone pushes to a branch in that fork then GitHub Actions will automatically publish the packages to a GitHub Pages site.

To install these packages, use commands such as:

$ mpremote connect /dev/ttyUSB0 mip install --index https://USERNAME.github.io/micropython-lib/mip/BRANCH_NAME PACKAGE_NAME

Or from a networked device:

import mip
mip.install(PACKAGE_NAME, index="https://USERNAME.github.io/micropython-lib/mip/BRANCH_NAME")

(Where USERNAME, BRANCH_NAME and PACKAGE_NAME are replaced with the owner of the fork, the branch the packages were built from, and the package name.)

Contributing

We use GitHub Discussions as our forum, and Discord for chat. These are great places to ask questions and advice from the community or to discuss your MicroPython-based projects.

The MicroPython Wiki is also used for micropython-lib.

For bugs and feature requests, please raise an issue.

We welcome pull requests to add new packages, fix bugs, or add features. Please be sure to follow the Contributor's Guidelines & Code Conventions. Note that MicroPython is licensed under the MIT license and all contributions should follow this license.

Future plans (and new contributor ideas)

• Develop a set of example programs using these packages.
• Develop more MicroPython packages for common tasks.
• Expand unit testing coverage.
• Add support for referencing remote/third-party repositories.

Notes on terminology

The terms library, package, and module are overloaded and lead to some confusion. The interpretation used in by the MicroPython project is that:

A library is a collection of installable packages, e.g. The Python Standard Library, or micropython-lib.

A package can refer to two things. The first meaning, "library package", is something that can be installed from a library, e.g. via mip (or pip in CPython/PyPI). Packages provide modules that can be imported. The ambiguity here is that the module provided by the package does not necessarily have to have the same name, e.g. the pyjwt package provides the jwt module. In CPython, the pyserial package providing the serial module is another common example.

A module is something that can be imported. For example, "the os module".

A module can be implemented either as a single file, typically also called a module or "single-file module", or as a package (the second meaning), which in this context means a directory containing multiple .py files (usually at least an __init__.py).

In micropython-lib, we also have the concept of an extension package which is a library package that extends the functionality of another package, by adding additional files to the same package directory. These packages have hyphenated names. For example, the collections-defaultdict package extends the collections package to add the defaultdict class to the collections module.