How do I install the yaml package for Python?

I have a Python program that uses YAML. I attempted to install it on a new server using pip install yaml and it returns the following:

$ sudo pip install yaml
Downloading/unpacking yaml
  Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement yaml
No distributions at all found for yaml
Storing complete log in /home/pa/.pip/pip.log

How do I install the yaml package for Python? I'm running Python 2.7. (OS: Debian Wheezy)

You could try the search feature in pip,

$ pip search yaml

which looks for packages in PyPI with yaml in the short description. That reveals various packages, including PyYaml, yamltools, and PySyck, among others (Note that PySyck docs recommend using PyYaml, since syck is out of date). Now you know a specific package name, you can install it:

$ pip install pyyaml

If you want to install python yaml system-wide in linux, you can also use a package manager, like aptitude or yum:

$ sudo apt-get install python-yaml
$ sudo yum install python-yaml

pip install pyyaml

If you don't have pip, run easy_install pip to install pip, which is the go-to package installer - Why use pip over easy_install?. If you prefer to stick with easy_install, then easy_install pyyaml

This answers if for MacOS

Update: Nowadays installing is done with pip, and for many users a wheel may be available (depending on your Mac and required version of PyYaml). In some cases libyaml is still required to build the C extension (on mac); this can be done with:

brew install libyaml
python -m pip install pyyaml

Outdated method:

For MacOSX (mavericks), the following works:

brew install libyaml
sudo python -m easy_install pyyaml

pip install PyYAML

If libyaml is not found or compiled PyYAML can do without it on Mavericks.

There are three YAML capable packages. Syck (pip install syck) which implements the YAML 1.0 specification from 2002; PyYAML (pip install pyyaml) which follows the YAML 1.1 specification from 2004; and ruamel.yaml which follows the latest (YAML 1.2, from 2009) specification.

You can install the YAML 1.2 compatible package with pip install ruamel.yaml or if you are running a modern version of Debian/Ubuntu (or derivative) with:

sudo apt-get install python-ruamel.yaml