pim

pim is a light-weight command-line interface for initializing and publishing Python packages, inspired by npm. Under the hood, it wraps the standard python installation tool pip along with wheel and twine, and hopefully makes it all easier to use, without inventing any new conventions.

Why? In javascript, managing node packages with the command-line tool npm is incredibly easy, which encourages modularity. In contrast, writing new Python packages and publishing them is kind of a pain. You have to remember lots of boilerplate and configuration and tooling, and redo it for every new package. The hope is that streamlining this process will encourage more people to publish resuable code!

example

Initialize a project

mkdir project
cd project
pim init

You'll be prompted with a set of questions, most of which will be pre-filled with sensible defaults, e.g.

name: [project]
version: [1.0.0]
author: [your-git-name]
email: [your-git-email]
repository: [https://github.com/your-git-name/project]
readme: [README.md]
license: [MIT]
entry point: [main.py]

Once it runs you'll have a folder layout that looks like:

project
├── project
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── main.py
├── MANIFEST.in
├── requirements.txt
├── setup.cfg
└── setup.py

You can now add dependencies to your requirements.txt file (which will also be picked up by setup.py).

pim install boto requests

The -g flag will install the same package(s) into your environment using pip, which is convienient when you want the same package present in the same environment you are developing in.

You can similarly remove dependencies.

pim uninstall boto

Which will remove the package(s) from requirements.txt, and also uninstall from your environment with -g. With install and uninstall, you should never need to manually edit your requirements.txt file!

commands

pim init --force[-f]

Initializes a package by asking you some questions, and then creating the appropriate files, including setup.py, setup.cfg, requirements.txt, and a basic module layout.

Options

• --force[-f] whether to overwrite existing files

pim install <package(s)> --globally[-g]

Add package(s) to your project's requirements.txt file, if not already present. With no arguments and the -g flag, will install everything in requirements into your environment.

Options

• --globally[-g] also install into your environment using pip

pim uninstall <package(s)> --globally[-g]

Remove package(s) from your project's requirements.txt file, if it's present.

Options

• --globally[-g] also uninstall from your environment using pip

pim publish <options>

TODO Publish the package to PyPi. Will deal with any one-time configuration if neccessary.

credit

The idea for this initially came from Winthrop Gillis (@wingillis), and evolved through a discussion with @danielballan and @ericdill and others at PyData 2016. See the list of collaborators.

license

MIT