- FRC Game Manual
- FRC Game Q&A

# Python Installation Guide

This guide is intended for Python teams. Java and C++ teams can skip to WPILib Installation Guide. LabVIEW teams can skip to Installing LabVIEW for FRC (LabVIEW only).

## Prerequisites

You must install a supported version of Python on a supported operating system. Every year we upgrade RobotPy to the latest available version of Python. In 2026 we support Python 3.10/3.11/3.12/3.13/3.14, but only 3.14 is available for the roboRIO.

Supported Operating Systems and Architectures:

  - Windows 10 & 11, 64 bit only. 32 bit and Arm are not supported

  - macOS 13.3 or higher

  - Ubuntu 22.04 & 24.04, 64 bit. Other Linux distributions with glibc >= 2.35 may work, but are unsupported

On Windows and macOS, we recommend using the official Python installers distributed by python.org.

- Python for Windows

- Python for macOS

## Install RobotPy

Once you have installed Python, you can use pip to install RobotPy on your development computer.

Windows

Note

If you previously installed a pre-2024 or 2024 beta version of RobotPy, you should first uninstall RobotPy via `py -m pip uninstall robotpy` before upgrading.

Warning

On Windows, the Visual Studio 2022 redistributable package is required to be installed.

Run the following command from cmd or Powershell to install the core RobotPy packages:

    py -3 -m pip install robotpy

To upgrade, you can run this:

    py -3 -m pip install --upgrade robotpy

If you don’t have administrative rights on your computer, either use virtualenv/virtualenvwrapper-win, or or you can install to the user site-packages directory:

    py -3 -m pip install --user robotpy

macOS

Note

If you previously installed a pre-2024 or 2024 beta version of RobotPy, you should first uninstall RobotPy via `python3 -m pip uninstall robotpy` before upgrading.

On a macOS system that has pip installed, just run the following command from the Terminal application (may require admin rights):

    python3 -m pip install robotpy

To upgrade, you can run this:

    python3 -m pip install --upgrade robotpy

If you don’t have administrative rights on your computer, either use virtualenv/virtualenvwrapper, or you can install to the user site-packages directory:

    python3 -m pip install --user robotpy

Linux

Note

If you previously installed a pre-2024 or 2024 beta version of RobotPy, you should first uninstall RobotPy via `python3 -m pip uninstall robotpy` before upgrading.

RobotPy distributes manylinux binary wheels on PyPI. However, installing these requires a distro that has glibc 2.35 or newer, and an installer that implements PEP 600, such as pip 20.3 or newer. You can check your version of pip with the following command:

    python3 -m pip --version

If you need to upgrade your version of pip, it is highly recommended to use a virtual environment.

If you have a compatible version of pip, you can simply run:

    python3 -m pip install robotpy

To upgrade, you can run this:

    python3 -m pip install --upgrade robotpy

If you manage to install the packages and get the following error or something similar, your system is most likely not compatible with RobotPy:

    OSError: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.22' not found (required by /usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/wpiutil/lib/libwpiutil.so)

Linux ARM Coprocessor

We publish prebuilt wheels on artifactory, which can be downloaded by giving the `--extra-index-url` option to pip:

    python3 -m pip install --extra-index-url=https://wpilib.jfrog.io/artifactory/api/pypi/wpilib-python-release-2026/simple robotpy

source install

Alternatively, if you have a C++20 compiler installed, you may be able to use pip to install RobotPy from source.

Warning

It may take a very long time to install!

Warning

Mixing our pre-built wheels with source installs may cause runtime errors. This is due to internal ABI incompatibility between compiler versions.

Our ARM wheels are built for Debian 12 (Bookworm) with GCC 12.

If you need to build with a specific compiler version, you can specify them using the `CC` and `CXX` environment variables:

    export CC=gcc-12 CXX=g++-12

## Download RobotPy for roboRIO

After installing the `robotpy` project on your computer, there are a variety of commands available that can be ran from the command line via the `robotpy` module.

See also

Documentation for robotpy subcommands

If you already have a RobotPy robot project, you can use that to download the pieces needed to run on the roboRIO. If you don’t have a project, running this command in an empty directory will initialize a new robot project:

Windows

    py -3 -m robotpy init

macOS

    python3 -m robotpy init

Linux

    python3 -m robotpy init

This will create a `robot.py` and `pyproject.toml` file. The `robot.py` file contains a skeleton structure to help you get started writing your robot code. The `pyproject.toml` file should be customized and details the requirements needed to run your robot code, among other things.

Important

The `robotpy deploy` command requires that you have written working robot code. The generated `robot.py` is just a starting point - you cannot deploy to the roboRIO until you have implemented your robot-specific code. See the RobotPy Programming Guide for information on writing robot code.

See also

The default `pyproject.toml` created for you only contains the version of RobotPy installed on your computer. If you want to enable vendor packages or install other python packages from PyPI, see our pyproject.toml documentation

Next run the `robotpy sync` subcommand, which will:

- Download Python compiled for roboRIO

- Download roboRIO compatible python packages as specified by your `pyproject.toml`

- Install the packages specified by your `pyproject.toml` into your local environment

Note

If you aren’t using a virtualenv and don’t have administrative privileges, the `robotpy sync` command accepts a `--user` argument to install to the user-specific site-packages directory.

Windows

    py -3 -m robotpy sync

macOS

    python3 -m robotpy sync

Linux

    python3 -m robotpy sync

When you deploy your code to the roboRIO, the deploy subcommand will automatically install Python (if needed) and your robot project requirements on the roboRIO as part of the deploy process.