share common dependencies between installed applications

[ZeeD]

Let's say that there are two packages, foo and bar that are pipx-installable. Both of them depends on the same hugelib - and also on the same version / there is a version that is compatible with both of them.

From what I've understood, if I do pipx install foo and then pipx install bar

• under ~/.local/share/pipx/venvs/ there will be two virtual envs (one for foo the other for bar)
• each of them will have a "copy" of the same version of hugelib

this might result in a "waste" of space, but I haven't found any configuration/setup to ask pipx to share the (common) dependencies between venvs - I was hoping pipx had something like pdm cache funtionality...

Did I miss something? Is there (or there is some plan to add) a way to cache and share the dependencies between installations?

[huxuan]

AFAIK, there is no bulit-in support in Python, so pipx can not make it natively.

BTW, pdm cache is just cache for installation, it is not shared actually. It just make other projects install same dependencies faster with more storage consuming.

[ZeeD]

Hi @huxuan thanks for your response.

BTW, pdm cache is just cache for installation, it is not shared actually. It just make other projects install same dependencies faster with more storage consuming.

I'm not sure to understand this sentence: my experience with pdm (and also according to pdm-project/pdm#2604 (comment) ) there is a lot of space saved, as in each of my projects venvs I just have a symbolic link to the actual files stored in pdm local package cache...

Also, faster installs (for pipx, I mean) it also seems a good thing to achieve :)

AFAIK, there is no bulit-in support in Python, so pipx can not make it natively.

I'm having trouble following: what kind of built-in support is needed? you mean this is something that should be done in pipx dependencies? in venv library?
Do you think it will not be possible to implement a solution on top of current dependencies?

[huxuan]

Thanks for the correction.

Just as you have metioned, this is a pdm feature, not widely adopted in Python community. There is no PEP for it so you can find some corner cases (pdm-project/pdm#2378, pdm-project/pdm#623 (comment)) and the workaround is just disabling the cache.

I am not saying this is not doable, but I think it would be hard for pipx to implement without breaking anything.

[uranusjr]

IMO this should be done at the virtual environment or package installer level instead. pipx needs to go too low level to make this happen.