[Python-Dev] OneGet provider for Python

[Vincent Povirk]

I have been following OneGet development very closely, and I have
volunteered to create a OneGet provider for installing Python
packages. Normally, I would keep quiet about this sort of thing until
I have actual code that works, but since no one else on the OneGet
seems as interested in doing it, and the Python community (if this
mailing list is anything to go by) doesn't know what to make of this
stuff, I figured I should try to open lines of communication before I
start essentially making decisions on this community's behalf.

So, the main advantage of a Python provider is that you would be able
to do things like:
> Install-Package -Provider Python -Name Pygments
or
> Install-Package Pygments-2.0.1-py3-none-any.whl

and OneGet would be able to bootstrap (if necessary) the Python
provider itself, Python 3.x, and pip, and use pip to install the .whl.
(I'm unclear at the moment on whether pip is necessary to install a
.whl, but currently it looks to be the best thing to lean on for the
job of installing/uninstalling things).

My end goal is to be able to package a Python application such that an
end-user on Windows (who doesn't know anything about Python) can
easily install it, without either of us having to think about how all
the dependencies are going to get there.

I think that the best approach for the moment is to lean heavily on
pip for installing/uninstalling things, while duplicating other tasks
(such as listing installed packages, querying information about
package files, searching PyPI) in C# so that they do not require a
Python environment.

If anyone has questions or concerns about this, please let me know.
Keep in mind that I am not subscribed to the mailing list and will
have to be CC'd.

If anyone has questions about OneGet generally, you should probably
ask them directly (see https://github.com/OneGet/oneget), as I am not
a definitive source of information on the project.

Incidentally, it would be really useful if python.org provided stable
url's that always redirected to the latest .msi installers, for
bootstrapping purposes. I'd prefer to not rely on chocolatey (or on
scraping the web site) for this.

(Also, I don't think this is ready yet, but in the future it will be
possible to add <link> tags to websites, such that one can do things
like "Install-Package https://www.python.org" and have the right
things happen.)