Searches the (windows) system for arcgis and makes arcpy available to python (regardless of pythonpath/system path/registry settings). It's typically used when using a python distribution that's wasn't installed by ArcGIS. Ones downloaded direct from Python.org or a conda environment for two examples.

If ArcGIS is not found, an ImportError is thrown.

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

try:
    import archook #The module which locates arcgis
    archook.get_arcpy()
    import arcpy
except ImportError:
    # do whatever you do if arcpy isnt there.

try:
    import archook #The module which locates arcgis
    archook.get_arcpy(pro=True)
    import arcpy
except ImportError:
    # do whatever you do if arcpy isnt there.

Note: You may need to create a conda-meta directory in your Python interpreter's directory (referred to by sys.prefix) if you get an error like the following:

ImportError("arcpy needs to run within an active ArcGIS Conda environment")

Regular install with pip:

pip install archook

Install in developer mode using Git:

git clone https://github.com/JamesRamm/archook.git
pip install --editable .\archook

Install in developer mode manually:

• Fetch https://github.com/JamesRamm/archook/archive/master.zip
• unzip %userprofile%\downloads\archook-master.zip
• run pip install --editable path\to\archook-master