[Distutils] Making pip and PyPI work with conda packages

[David Mertz]

I've just started monitoring this SIG to get a sense of the issues and
status of things.  I've also just started working for Continuum Analytics.

Continuum has a great desire to make 'pip' work with conda packages.
Obviously, we love for users to choose the Anaconda Python distribution but
many will not for a variety of reasons (many good reasons).

However, we would like for users of other distros still to be able to
benefit from our creation of binary packages for many platforms in the
conda format.  As has been discussed in recent threads on dependency
solving, the way conda provides metadata apart from entire packages makes
much of that work easier.  But even aside from that, there are simply a
large number of well-tested packages (not only for Python, it is true, so
that's possibly a wrinkle in the task) we have generated in conda format.

It is true that right now, a user can in principle type:

  % pip install conda
  % conda install some_conda_package

But that creates two separate systems for tracking what's installed and
what dependencies are resolved; and many users will not want to convert
completely to conda after that step.

What would be better as a user experience would be to let users do this:

  % pip install --upgrade pip
  % pip install some_conda_package

Whether that second command ultimately downloads code from pyip.python.org
or from repo.continuum.io is probably less important for a user experience
perspective.  Continuum is very happy to upload all of our conda packages
to PyPI if this would improve this user experience.  Obviously, the idea
here would be that the user would be able to type 'pip list' and friends
afterward, and have knowledge of what was installed, even as conda packages.

I'm hoping members of the SIG can help me understand both the technical and
social obstacles that need to be overcome before this can happen.

Yours, David...
-- 
The dead increasingly dominate and strangle both the living and the
not-yet born.  Vampiric capital and undead corporate persons abuse
the lives and control the thoughts of homo faber. Ideas, once born,
become abortifacients against new conceptions.
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