add option to sandbox package and its dependencies (like pipsi)

What’s the problem this feature will solve?

When installing packages that have console entry_points and should be globally accessible (such as black), the only way to do this is to have all packages share the same dependencies.

The problems with this are

1.) packages may have conflicting dependencies 2.) even if there are no conflicts, installing packages globally mixes user installed packages with eachother and with system installed packages. This makes it difficult to know which packages rely on which; pip freeze gets very large. 3.) Isolating packages requires virtual envs which has a somewhat high learning curve, and also requires activation/deactivation, and remembering the name of each virtual env.

Describe the solution you’d like

Add a new flag to pip install such that the installation works like pipsi.

pipsi creates a virtual environment for each top-level package, and installs dependencies to the site-packages within the package’s virtual environment.

pipsi installs each package into ~/.local/venvs/PKGNAME and then symlinks all new scripts into ~/.local/bin

Compared to pip install --user each PKGNAME is installed into its own virtualenv, so you don’t have to worry about different PKGNAMEs having conflicting dependencies.

Ideas for flag names. Only one of these would be chosen.

• pip install PKGNAME --isolate
• pip install PKGNAME --shield
• pip install PKGNAME --auto-venv
• pip install PKGNAME --into-venv
• pip install PKGNAME --venv
• pip install PKGNAME --virtual

Alternative Solutions

Additional context

[pfmoore]

@cs01 Thanks for the clarification - I’d assumed you meant virtualenv style rather than --target, so now that I understand what you were after, I see your point better.

I think what you’re suggesting could probably be done with a relatively small wrapper script round pip. That script could run pip (via subprocess), then change the necessary environment variables and run the entry point (again via subprocess). You could make such a thing as specific or generic as you felt necessary.

In fact, I think the rwt (“run with this”) package on PyPI may be of interest to you. As I understand it, it does something very like this.

I still think it’s something we’d rather not make “official” in pip - there are too many odd edge cases that would potentially confuse users, that we’d have to support. Making the step with something like this from “works for me” to “capable of handling the needs of a big user base” is always a lot more work than it seems at first!

[lock[bot]]

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