Option to install package globally for multi-user access

[alextremblay]

Hi All, not sure if this qualifies as a feature request, or if it's already possible and just needs to be documented?

pipx by default installs its virtualenvs in a folder inside the user's home directory (ie ~/.local/pipx/venvs/), and installs the entrypoint binaries for those packages/virtualenvs in the user's personal path (ie ~/.local/bin).

Is it possible to install packages with pipx such that they are globally executable by all users on a system (ie install entrypoint binaries in /usr/local/bin, install virtualenvs somewhere that all users can access them?

How would this feature be useful?

Having this ability would make pipx a prime candidate for people looking to deploy python software in multi-user environments. Without this ability, pipx is not usable at all in such situations

Describe the solution you'd like

Ideally, some kind of --shared or --global flag would be the most straightforward solution, but even something like an optional environment variable would be nice

Ex: sudo pipx install --global cowsay

Describe alternatives you've considered

There are currently no alternatives / workarounds that I'm aware of. I cannot find anything about this in the documentation, the github issues, or on the web

[cs01]

There are a couple environment variables that I think can do what you’re asking for.

See PIPX_HOME and PIPX_BIN_DIR.

https://pypa.github.io/pipx/docs/

[alextremblay]

ahhhh, ok.

Apologies, i completely missed that in the documentation!

so if i understood correctly, a workaround to install globally accessible python apps with pipx on linux would be:

$ sudo PIPX_HOME=/opt/pipx PIPX_BIN_DIR=/usr/local/bin pipx install cowsay

is that right?

in that case, would pipx create /opt/pipx, or does it need to exist first?

[alextremblay]

I just tested the above command, and it works exactly as intended!

didn't need to pre-create the directory or futz with directory permissions or anything :)

Is there any interest in me creating a PR to add this to the documentation?

[uranusjr]

Yes, that would be awesome 🙂

[Jackenmen]

It appears that this is already mentioned in the documentation:
https://pypa.github.io/pipx/installation/#installation-options

Is there any interest in exposing this in pipx for easier use or should users just be expected to create a shell alias if they want to use this regularly?

[Jackenmen]

Something I observed while trying out this solution today - it is impossible to run pretty much all commands (e.g. pipx list) without being the owner of PIPX_HOME because pipx uses the logs subdirectory of PIPX_HOME for its logs and that directory isn't accessible to regular users when set to /opt/pipx. A workaround for this is giving access to the /opt/pipx/logs for everyone but that doesn't seem ideal.

[Jackenmen]

Presumably, it would be safer to take additional pre-cautions such as only using the elevated permissions for installing the package, while building it with a normal user account. I imagine that this, however, might be out of scope for pipx, even if it would be incredibly cool if it could do that 😄

[uranusjr]

We can probably detect the log directory’s permission, and log to somewhere the user is likely to own (e.g. use platformdirs) instead. This probably involves some tinkering with logging configuration, which is always tedious, so I’m probably not going to do that…

[Jackenmen]

This probably involves some tinkering with logging configuration, which is always tedious, so I’m probably not going to do that…

What I hear is PRs welcome? :-) I might tinker with it later today.

[carlolars]

I think it would be nice to have a switch for global install. For example when using doas instead of sudo I had to first do doas su to run the pipx command with the environment variables as root. It would be a lot easier to just do doas pipx install --global cowsay.

[eode]

I definitely would like to have a --global option for pipx. I've put some thought into how this could be done (fairly) reasonably:

• New environment vars:
  • PIPX_GLOBAL_HOME
  • PIPX_GLOBAL_BIN_DIR
• Normal 'local' usage is treated just as it is now (including when using as root) except:
  • If the global directory is present, global info is included in output
  • --local can be specified to exclude global info
  • install output changes to "These apps are now locally available"
• With --global:
  • Use PIPX_GLOBAL_* env vars.
    • Use PIPX_GLOBAL_HOME, or distro-specific global install dir, or /opt/pipx/ (failover)
    • Use PIPX_GLOBAL_BIN_DIR, the distro-specific global bin dir, or /usr/local/bin/ (failover)
  • Treat the global dir as though we have write permission -- user should have elevated permissions using sudo
• Encourage proper usage via cli
  • Wherever a command looks like it might be mistaken, issue a warning / suggestion
    • "Writing into /home/someuser/.local/pipx, owned by someuser, as root. Did you mean to use --global?
    • "Installing foopkg locally for the user root. Did you mean to use --global?
• JSON output includes "global venvs" key as a sibling to the "venvs" key.
• Release on a major version change, because it introduces a new concept and changes the output.

Example usage:

$ pipx list
global venvs are in /opt/pipx/venvs
apps are exposed on your $PATH at /usr/local/bin
   package poetry 1.1.0, installed using Python 3.10.4
    - poetry
local venvs are in /home/someuser/.local/pipx/venvs
apps are exposed on your $PATH at /home/someuser/.local/bin
   package doit 0.36.0, installed using Python 3.10.4
    - doit
   package poetry 1.1.14, installed using Python 3.10.4
    - poetry
$ pipx list --local
local venvs are in /home/someuser/.local/pipx/venvs
apps are exposed on your $PATH at /home/someuser/.local/bin
   package doit 0.36.0, installed using Python 3.10.4
    - doit
   package poetry 1.1.14, installed using Python 3.10.4
    - poetry
$ sudo pipx install --global foocmd
  installed package foocmd 0.9.0, installed using Python 3.10.4
  These apps are now globally available
    - foo
    - foolog
done! ✨ 🌟 ✨
$ pipx install foocmd
  installed package foocmd 0.9.0, installed using Python 3.10.4
  These apps are now locally available
    - foo
    - foolog
done! ✨ 🌟 ✨

All-in-all, that's a fair amount of work, but not a ton of work to make the change, but I think that all of that work would be necessary to fully implement this change.

Alternately, --global could just do an override of the existing PIPX_HOME and PIPX_BIN_DIR env-vars, using distro-specific settings. This just means that sudo pipx list --global is required to read global items. I just like the UX of pipx list showing global and local installs.