Thanks! I noticed python3-unearth is a debian pkg so that looks like a good first approach for me to try.

@evenwicht The --debug option will show URLs. But you'd probably have an easier time with unearth (pypi.org/project/unearth/), which by default will just print the URL and other metadata without downloading the wheel file. Or, the API offered by PyPI is a published standard (packaging.python.org/en/latest), so in principle you can get wheel URLs by just following the instructions in that standard - you can even open some (rather large) HTML pages in your browser and click a few links and get the wheel URLs that way.#Python

Sounds feasible for a python dev, which I am not. The situation is that end-users of Python apps (who are not necessarily programmers of any kind) are put in a position of grappling with developer tools.

I’m not only looking for a better approach for my own installation of argostranslate but I also intend to publish the improved approach. Although I could probably work out how to patch pip, it gets messy when putting that patch in an argostranslate installation guide for end users. So patching pip would be high effort with low return (collectively, unless the patch gets a PR, but then only an MS Github user could do a PR).

can't you just like patch pip to output/log the url?

I use pyenv to install/activate different versions. However, I always do this on the target and connected to the internet. I can't tell you whether and how this works in a local network. Nor can I say whether this is really the case, you'll just have to see for yourself. Regarding pip, maybe take a look at uv? (I'm still using pip myself, but I've only read good things about uv).

Can uv solve my problems described here:

https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/47854595

?

I must say I hate the name. “uv” is not searchable. But hopefully it can serve as the first decent pkg manager.