archook

archook searches a Windows machine for ArcGIS and updates the active Python process so arcpy can be imported from a Python installation that ArcGIS did not manage directly.

If ArcGIS is not found, archook raises ImportError.

Use pro=True to target ArcGIS Pro instead of ArcGIS Desktop.

Usage

ArcGIS Desktop

try:
    import archook

    archook.get_arcpy()
    import arcpy
except ImportError:
    pass

ArcGIS Pro

try:
    import archook

    archook.get_arcpy(pro=True)
    import arcpy
except ImportError:
    pass

Install

Install the published package with pip:

pip install archook

Install directly from GitHub:

pip install https://github.com/JamesRamm/archook/archive/refs/heads/master.zip

Develop

Requires Python 3.10 or later.

Create the project environment and install the dev tools with uv:

uv sync --group dev

Run the test suite:

uv run pytest -q

Build source and wheel distributions:

uv build

Notes

ArcGIS Pro may require a conda-meta directory under the active interpreter's sys.prefix. If arcpy reports that it must run inside an active ArcGIS conda environment, create that directory and retry.

Archook was developed by James Ramm, currently maintained by Matt Wilkie.