Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages

Updating Kivy from a previous release

When updating from a previous Kivy release, all the Kivy dependencies must be updated first. Typically, just adding –upgrade to the pip install … commands below is sufficient for pip to update them.

python -m pip uninstall -y kivy.deps.glew kivy.deps.gstreamer kivy.deps.sdl2 kivy.deps.angle

Installing the kivy stable release

Now that python is installed, open the Command line and make sure python is available by typing python --version. Then, do the following to create a new virtual environment (optionally) and install the most recent stable kivy release (1.11.1) and its dependencies.

1. Ensure you have the latest pip, wheel, and virtualenv:

   python -m pip install --upgrade pip wheel setuptools virtualenv
   

   Optionally create a new virtual environment for your Kivy project. Highly recommended:

   1. First create the environment named kivy_venv in your current directory:

      python -m virtualenv kivy_venv
      

   2. Activate the virtual environment. You’ll have to do this step from the current directory every time you start a new terminal. On windows CMD do:

      kivy_venv\Scripts\activate
      

      If you’re in a bash terminal, instead do:

      source kivy_venv/Scripts/activate
      

   Your terminal should now preface the path with something like (kivy_venv), indicating that the kivy_venv environment is active. If it doesn’t say that, the virtual environment is not active.

2. Install the dependencies (skip gstreamer (~120MB) if not needed, see Kivy’s dependencies). If you are upgrading Kivy, see Updating Kivy from a previous release:

   python -m pip install docutils pygments pypiwin32 kivy_deps.sdl2==0.1.* kivy_deps.glew==0.1.*
   python -m pip install kivy_deps.gstreamer==0.1.*
   

   Note

   If you encounter a MemoryError while installing, add after pip install the –no-cache-dir option.

   For Python 3.5+, you can also use the angle backend instead of glew. This can be installed with:

   python -m pip install kivy_deps.angle==0.1.*
   

   Warning

   When installing, pin kivy’s dependencies to the specific version that was released on pypi when your kivy version was released, like above. Otherwise you may get an incompatible dependency when it is updated in the future.

3. Install kivy:

   python -m pip install kivy==1.11.1
   

4. (Optionally) Install the kivy examples:

   python -m pip install kivy_examples==1.11.1
   

   The examples are installed in the share directory under the root directory where python is installed.

That’s it. You should now be able to import kivy in python or run a basic example if you installed the kivy examples:

python kivy_venv\share\kivy-examples\demo\showcase\main.py

Replace kivy_venv with the path where python is installed if you didn’t use a virtualenv.

What are wheels, pip and wheel

In Python, packages such as Kivy can be installed with the python package manager, pip. Some packages such as Kivy require additional steps, such as compilation, when installing using the Kivy source code with pip. Wheels (with a .whl extension) are pre-built distributions of a package that has already been compiled and do not require additional steps to install.

When hosted on pypi one installs a wheel using pip, e.g. python -m pip install kivy. When downloading and installing a wheel directly, python -m pip install wheel_file_name is used, such as:

python -m pip install C:\Kivy-1.9.1.dev-cp27-none-win_amd64.whl

Kivy’s dependencies

We offer wheels for Kivy and its dependencies separately so only desired dependencies need be installed. The dependencies are offered as optional sub-packages of kivy_deps, e.g. kivy_deps.sdl2.

Currently on Windows, we provide the following dependency wheels:

• gstreamer for audio and video
• glew and/or angle (3.5 only) for OpenGL
• sdl2 for control and/or OpenGL.

One can select which of these to use for OpenGL using the KIVY_GL_BACKEND envrionment variable by setting it to glew (the default), angle, or sdl2. angle is currently in an experimental phase as a substitute for glew on Python 3.5+ only.

gstreamer is an optional dependency which only needs to be installed if video display or audio is desired. ffpyplayer is an alternate dependency for audio or video.