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

[Russell Keith-Magee]

On Sun, Sep 6, 2015 at 12:04 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> On 9/5/2015 5:03 PM, Terry Reedy wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
>
> Inspired by this thread, I did some experiments and am fairly confident that
> pip.main can be imported and used directly, bypassing paths, subprocesses,
> and pipes.

I can confirm that this is, indeed, possible. I use this exact
technique in my tool Briefcase to simplify the process of packaging
code as an app bundle.

https://github.com/pybee/briefcase/blob/master/briefcase/app.py#L108

Yours,
Russ Magee %-)