[Python-ideas] High time for a builtin function to manage packages (simply)?

[Terry Reedy]

On 9/5/2015 3:08 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> So let's fix it, already![1]  Now that we have a blessed package
> management module, why not have a builtin that handles the simple
> cases?  Say
>
>      def installer(package, command='install'):
>          ...

Because new builtins have a high threashold to reach, and this doesn't 
reach it? Installation is a specialized and rare operation.

Because pip must be installed anyway, so a function should be in the 
package and imported?
   from pip import main
(I realized that PM indepedence is part of the proposal. See below.)

I think a gui frontend is an even better idea. The tracker has a 
proposal to make such, once written, available from Idle.
   https://bugs.python.org/issue23551
I was thinking that the gui code should be in pip itself and not 
idlelib, so as to be available to any Python shell or IDE. If it covered 
multiple PMs, then it might go somewhere in the stdlib.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy