pip list is unable to mention architecture

[ssbarnea]

Description

If someone happens to upgrade from intel to aarch64, pip will not be able to help him identify any packages that are using wrong architecture. They would have to either uninstall or use install --force in order to address the issue.

Expected behavior

At least the JSON output of pip list should mention architecture when that is avaiable but now it does not do this:

python -m pip list --format=json

Ideally pip should all be smart enough to detect a mismatch in architecture and ignore or warn about mismatched packages. For example pip check would be a good candidate for that too.

pip version

22.0.4

Python version

3.11.3

OS

MacOS

How to Reproduce

It might be harder to reproduce the way I got into it, as I used Apple Migration Assistant to migrate from old computer to the new one but I guess you could just force pip to install a binary wheel using a different architecture.

Once this happens, you are kinda clueless if the wheel is usable or not, at least until you try to do an import from the binary parts.

Output

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the PSF Code of Conduct.

[uranusjr]

Unfortunately I don’t think there’s metadata recording the wheel architecture available at all, after a wheel is installed. It’s not even theoratically possible, since packages not installed from wheel (but e.g. from setup.py install) doesn’t have that metadata to begin with. So this would need

1. A way to record wheel metadata on installation. Simpliest way is to copy WHEEL-METADATA into the dist-info directory). This may need a discussion in packaging.python.org and a standard (PEP).
2. Remove setup.py install so we always install wheels and get that metadata. Deprecate call to setup.py install when building a wheel failed for source distributions without pyproject.toml #8368 would start the process.

[domdfcoding]

Doesn't the .dist-info/WHEEL file include the wheel tags, from which the architecture can be parsed? I can't see an explicit requirement from PEP 427 that the file be copied over from the wheel, but I think all tools do in practice.

[uranusjr]

Oh I wasn’t aware of that 😆 Someone must have used a time machine. So the question (aside from eliminating setup.py install) would be how to present that message appropriately. Feel free to try it out then.

[ssbarnea]

As I successfully dropped setup.py from all projects I am active with, I am not so concerned about not having support for it. Still, I am quite interested into getting arch info when listing, it could prove very useful. For start maybe we can write an utility script that does this or just add it as a feature to pip check?

[pradyunsg]

I think starting by writing a utility script for this is a good idea -- that makes it possible to demonstrate that this can be implemented and can be immediately usable for the situation you're dealing with.

That can also be adapted into pip's code, if the need to do so still exists after that. :)

[q0w]

packages = get_default_environment().iter_installed_distributions()
for p in packages:
    with open(f"{p.info_location}/WHEEL", 'r') as f:
        tags = list(map(lambda s: parse_tag(s), Parser().parse(f).get_all('Tag')))
        print(tags)

[ssbarnea]

@q0w While trying to test that snipped I was not able to find any class Parser in pip source code.