Support for menuinst

[dhirschfeld]

Problem description

It would be great if pixi supported menuinst:

This package provides cross platform menu item installation for conda packages.

If a conda package ships a menuinst JSON document under $PREFIX/Menu, conda will invoke menuinst to process the JSON file and install the menu items in your operating system. The menu items are removed when the package is uninstalled.

• https://github.com/conda/menuinst

[tdejager]

Hey Dave, thanks for the issue 👍
I was thinking about this as well as I currently still don't global install everything through pixi because of missing .app in the osx application folder.

I think this would be great for global installs at least. Do you have any experience how well this works @dhirschfeld ?

[dhirschfeld]

I don't have much experience with it, but my use case is also for globally installed tools.

I don't know that it makes much sense for per-environment tools/libraries but for globally installed tools/applications it could be pretty slick (make for a nice demo!)

[tdejager]

I agree, for sure!

[baszalmstra]

@tdejager do you think we'd have to port menuinst to rust?

[tdejager]

I think so yes, because it would affect the installation procedure. However, we could experiment with the python one first of course.

[jaimergp]

Feel free to ping me if there are any questions :) I'm sure we will find some rough edges and opportunities for improvement in menuinst itself. The schema should be pretty solid by now, although we are discussing some minor changes now at conda/menuinst#180.

[baszalmstra]

I moved this to a discussion in the ideas section. I think its a good idea but I just don't know when we'll get to it.

[ReimarBauer]

Without menuinst we found some encoding bugs on windows, e.g. Open-MSS/MSS#2668
menuinst had the great feature not to use a windows terminal and can't run in cp1252 encoding trouble.

[wolfv]

Good news - menuinst is coming to pixi global very soon! :)

[phreed]

Could you provide a link to the relevant, commit, issue, doc, or CEP ...

[wolfv]

Most of the work was done in rattler, in the rattler_menuinst crate: https://github.com/conda/rattler/tree/main/crates/rattler_menuinst

The CEP for menuinst itself is referenced in the menuinst docs: https://conda.github.io/menuinst/

The enablement in pixi came here: #3226

Sorry for not being more diligent with this!

[phreed]

CEP: https://github.com/conda/ceps/blob/main/cep-0011.md
rattler-build: https://rattler.build/latest/system_integration/

[phreed]

Is this all that is needed to make conda-forge suitable for GUI applications?

I presume some work would be needed to enable this capability in the following applications:?

FreeCAD : https://github.com/conda-forge/freecad-feedstock
Firefox : https://github.com/conda-forge/firefox-feedstock
Gazebo : https://prefix.dev/channels/conda-forge/packages/gazebo