Install psycopg2 to a target directory on Linux

I'm trying to install psycopg2 using pip's target switch, in order to build a zip file to upload to AWS Lambda.

In an empty directory on a new AWS EC2 instance, the following happens:

[ec2-user@ip-172-25-10-192 ~]$ pip install -t psycopg2 . You are using pip version 6.1.1, however version 7.1.2 is available. You should consider upgrading via the 'pip install --upgrade pip' command. Processing /home/ec2-user No files/directories in /tmp/pip-3SPtE_-build/pip-egg-info (from PKG-INFO)

Even if I upgrade pip, I get a similar error:

[ec2-user@ip-172-25-10-192 ~]$ /usr/local/bin/pip install -t psycopg2 . Processing /home/ec2-user No files/directories in /tmp/pip-DHJzs3-build/pip-egg-info (from PKG-INFO)