pipu-cli 0.1.dev4

A cute Python package updater

pipu

Author: Scott Arne Johnson ([e-mail])

A powerful and user-friendly Python package updater with advanced constraint handling, beautiful TUI, and intelligent version management. Keep your Python packages up-to-date while maintaining stability through smart constraint enforcement.

✨ Key Features

• 🎮 Interactive TUI - Beautiful terminal interface with keyboard navigation and real-time feedback
• 🎯 Smart Constraints - Automatic constraint discovery and enforcement to prevent breaking updates
• 🚫 Flexible Ignoring - Exclude packages from updates with environment-specific rules
• 📊 Rich Output - Color-coded tables showing constraints, versions, and update safety
• 🔍 Pre-release Support - Optional inclusion of alpha, beta, and RC versions
• ⚙️ Configurable - 10+ environment variables for advanced customization
• 🔒 Safe Updates - Thread-safe operations with guaranteed resource cleanup
• 🌐 Cross-Platform - Full support for Windows, macOS, and Linux

🚀 Quick Start

Installation

# Install in editable mode for development
pip install --config-settings editable_mode=compat -e ".[dev]"

Basic Usage

# Launch interactive TUI (recommended)
pipu

# List outdated packages
pipu list

# Update all packages with confirmation
pipu update

# Auto-update without prompting
pipu update --yes

That's it! For most users, just running pipu will give you everything you need.

📖 Detailed Usage

Commands Overview

Command	Description	Example
pipu	Launch interactive TUI	pipu
pipu list	List outdated packages	pipu list --pre
pipu update	Update packages (with confirmation)	pipu update --yes
pipu constrain	Manage version constraints	pipu constrain "requests<3.0"
pipu ignore	Manage ignored packages	pipu ignore setuptools pip

Interactive TUI Mode

The TUI is the easiest way to manage updates. Just run pipu with no arguments.

Navigation:

• ↑/↓ - Navigate packages
• Space - Toggle package selection
• A - Select all packages
• N - Deselect all packages
• Enter - Confirm and update selected packages
• Esc/Q - Cancel and exit
• H - Show help

Visual Indicators:

• ✓ Green checkmark = Selected for update
• 🟢 Green constraint = Safe to update
• 🔴 Red constraint = Update blocked by constraint
• ⚫ Gray dash (-) = No constraint

Command-Line Mode

For automation and scripting, use command-line mode:

# List outdated packages
pipu list

# Include pre-releases (alpha, beta, rc)
pipu list --pre

# Update with confirmation prompt
pipu update

# Update without confirmation (for scripts)
pipu update --yes

# Update including pre-releases
pipu update --pre --yes

Managing Constraints

Constraints prevent packages from updating beyond specific versions, ensuring stability.

Add Constraints:

# Single constraint
pipu constrain "requests>=2.25.0,<3.0.0"

# Multiple constraints
pipu constrain "numpy>=1.20.0" "pandas<2.0.0" "django~=4.1.0"

# Environment-specific (for conda/venv/poetry environments)
pipu constrain "pytest>=7.0.0" --env development

List Constraints:

# All constraints
pipu constrain --list

# Environment-specific
pipu constrain --list --env production

Remove Constraints:

# Remove specific packages
pipu constrain --remove requests numpy

# Remove from specific environment
pipu constrain --remove django --env production

# Remove ALL constraints (prompts for confirmation)
pipu constrain --remove-all

# Skip confirmation
pipu constrain --remove-all --yes

Auto-Discovery:

Pipu automatically discovers constraints from your installed packages' dependencies. For example, if deprecated==1.2.10 depends on wrapt<2, pipu will automatically constrain wrapt<2 and show "deprecated>1.2.10" as the trigger. These auto-constraints are temporary and removed when no longer needed.

Managing Ignored Packages

Ignored packages are completely excluded from update checks.

Add Ignores:

# Ignore packages globally
pipu ignore setuptools pip wheel

# Environment-specific ignores
pipu ignore pytest black mypy --env development

List Ignores:

pipu ignore --list
pipu ignore --list --env production

Remove Ignores:

pipu ignore --remove setuptools wheel
pipu ignore --remove-all
pipu ignore --remove-all --yes  # Skip confirmation

⚙️ Configuration

Environment Variables

Customize pipu's behavior with environment variables:

Network Settings:

export PIPU_TIMEOUT=30              # Network timeout (default: 10s)
export PIPU_RETRIES=3               # Retry attempts (default: 0)
export PIPU_MAX_NETWORK_ERRORS=3    # Max consecutive errors (default: 1)
export PIPU_RETRY_DELAY=1.0         # Delay between retries (default: 0.5s)

Subprocess Settings:

export PIPU_SUBPROCESS_TIMEOUT=60   # Subprocess timeout (default: 30s)
export PIPU_UNINSTALL_TIMEOUT=180   # Uninstall timeout (default: 120s)
export PIPU_FORCE_KILL_TIMEOUT=10   # Force kill timeout (default: 5s)

Caching & Logging:

export PIPU_CACHE_TTL=120           # Cache lifetime (default: 60s)
export PIPU_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG         # Logging level (default: WARNING)

Example: Slow Network Configuration

# For slow or unreliable networks
export PIPU_TIMEOUT=60
export PIPU_RETRIES=5
export PIPU_RETRY_DELAY=2.0
pipu update --yes

Pip Configuration Integration

Pipu seamlessly integrates with pip's configuration files:

Linux/macOS:

• ~/.config/pip/pip.conf (user-specific)
• ~/.pip/pip.conf (legacy)
• /etc/pip.conf (system-wide)

Windows:

• %APPDATA%\pip\pip.ini (user-specific)
• C:\ProgramData\pip\pip.ini (system-wide)

Example Configuration:

[global]
index-url = https://pypi.org/simple/
trusted-host = pypi.org

# Global constraints
constraints =
    requests>=2.25.0,<3.0.0
    numpy>=1.20.0
    django>=4.1.0,<5.0.0

# Global ignores
ignores = pip setuptools wheel

[development]
# Development-specific constraints
constraints =
    pytest>=7.0.0
    black>=22.0.0
    mypy>=1.0.0

ignores =
    requests
    numpy

📚 Advanced Topics

Constraint Sources (Priority Order)

Pipu checks these sources in order:

1. PIP_CONSTRAINT environment variable

   export PIP_CONSTRAINT=/path/to/constraints.txt
   

2. Pip config - Environment-specific section

   [myenv]  # Detected from conda/venv/poetry
   constraints = /path/to/constraints.txt
   

3. Pip config - Global section

   [global]
   constraints = /path/to/constraints.txt
   

4. Project root (legacy fallback)

   your-project/
   ├── pyproject.toml  # or setup.py
   └── constraints.txt
   

5. Auto-discovered constraints (from installed packages)

   • Automatically detected from package dependencies
   • Temporary and self-cleaning
   • Displayed with "Invalid When" trigger information

Constraint File Format

# Web frameworks
requests>=2.25.0,<3.0.0
django>=4.1.0,<5.0.0
flask~=2.0.0

# Data science
numpy>=1.20.0
pandas>=1.5.0,!=1.5.1
scipy>=1.9.0,!=1.9.1,<2.0.0

# Comments and empty lines are ignored
matplotlib==3.6.0  # Exact version

Constraint Operators

Operator	Description	Example
==1.0.0	Exact version	requests==2.28.0
>=1.0.0	Minimum version	numpy>=1.20.0
<=2.0.0	Maximum version	django<=4.2.0
>1.0.0,<2.0.0	Version range	flask>2.0,<3.0
~=1.4.0	Compatible version	black~=22.0
!=1.5.1	Exclude version	pandas!=1.5.1

Environment Detection

Pipu automatically detects your Python environment:

• Conda/Mamba/Micromamba: Uses $CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV
• Poetry: Runs poetry env info --name
• Virtualenv/venv: Uses basename of $VIRTUAL_ENV

This enables environment-specific constraints and ignores.

Invalidation Triggers

Pipu supports automatic constraint removal when packages are updated. Useful for temporary constraints:

# Add constraint with trigger
pipu constrain "wrapt<2" --invalidation-triggers "deprecated>1.2.10"

# When deprecated is updated to >1.2.10, wrapt constraint is automatically removed
pipu update deprecated

# Manually check and clean invalid constraints
pipu constrain --list  # Shows triggers

🎨 Output Examples

List Command Output

                    Outdated Packages
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Package      ┃ Version ┃ Latest  ┃ Type  ┃ Constraint ┃ Invalid When     ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ requests     │ 2.28.0  │ 2.31.0  │ wheel │ -          │ -                │
│ numpy        │ 1.19.5  │ 1.24.3  │ wheel │ >=1.20.0   │ -                │
│ wrapt        │ 1.14.0  │ 2.0.0   │ wheel │ <2         │ deprecated>1.2.10│
└──────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴───────┴────────────┴──────────────────┘

Color Coding:

• 🟢 Green = Constraint satisfied, safe to update
• 🔴 Red = Constraint violated, update blocked
• ⚫ Gray dash = No constraint

🔧 Development

Running Tests

# All tests (422 tests)
pytest tests/ -v

# Specific test categories
pytest tests/test_constraints.py -v
pytest tests/test_cli.py -v
pytest tests/test_tui_usability.py -v

# With coverage
pytest tests/ --cov=pipu_cli --cov-report=html

Building

# Install build dependencies
pip install build

# Build distribution
python -m build

# Install locally
pip install dist/pipu_cli-*.whl

Code Quality

The codebase includes:

• ✅ Thread-safe operations
• ✅ Cross-platform compatibility
• ✅ Comprehensive error handling
• ✅ Type hints on key functions
• ✅ Extensive test coverage (422 tests)
• ✅ Resource cleanup guarantees

🤝 Common Workflows

Workflow 1: First-Time Setup

# 1. Install pipu
pip install -e .

# 2. Check what's outdated
pipu list

# 3. Use interactive mode to select packages
pipu

# 4. Add constraints for critical packages
pipu constrain "django>=4.1,<5.0" "numpy>=1.20"

# 5. Update everything else
pipu update --yes

Workflow 2: CI/CD Pipeline

# Increase timeouts for CI environments
export PIPU_TIMEOUT=60
export PIPU_RETRIES=3
export PIPU_CACHE_TTL=300

# Check for outdated packages
pipu list

# Update with auto-approval
pipu update --yes

Workflow 3: Development Environment

# Create dev-specific constraints
pipu constrain "pytest>=7.0" --env development
pipu ignore requests numpy --env development

# Update only development packages
pipu update --yes

Workflow 4: Production Environment

# Strict constraints for production
pipu constrain "requests==2.28.0" --env production
pipu constrain "django~=4.1.0" --env production

# List what would be updated (without updating)
pipu list

# Only update when ready
pipu update --yes

📋 Troubleshooting

Common Issues

Slow Package Checks:

# Increase timeout and enable retries
export PIPU_TIMEOUT=30
export PIPU_RETRIES=3
pipu list

Network Errors:

# Enable debug logging
export PIPU_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG
pipu list

Terminal Display Issues:

# The TUI handles terminal cleanup automatically
# If issues persist, pipu resets terminal state on exit

Package Not Found:

# Check if package is in your pip indexes
pip search package-name

# Check your pip configuration
pip config list

📄 License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.

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Made with ❤️ for Python developers who want safe, smart package updates.