Add support for standalone application installers

[tjd2002]

With the impending return of conda-run in conda 4.6 (PR at conda/conda#7320; discussion at conda/conda#2379 and conda/conda#2682 ), I think it would be wildly useful if constructor could be used to build installers that expose only a limited set of entry points to a packaged app. I.e. allow installed software to be run without needing to activate the underlying conda env.

Motivation: I am packaging a scientific software suite with Python, NodeJS, and Qt components (https://github.com/flatironinstitute/mountainlab-js). It runs magically from a conda env (recipes at: https://github.com/flatironinstitute/mountainlab-conda) and from from a constructor installer. I would love to use these tools to provide a standalone installer for users who do not already use conda (or who may not want to). However after running the constructor installer, ~200 extra binaries are added to the user's path in addition to the app I am trying to install (clobbering, among other things, the user's Python, Pip, NodeJS, npm, qmake, Qt-designer, bzip2, and conda).

Using @kalefranz's experimental conda-run (or @gqmelo's exec-wrappers? ), one could instead expose only a limited set of binaries, via some simple wrapper scripts. This would allow the constructor-built installer to function as a standalone app installer (albeit one backed by a conda env).

One implementation of this would be to add an 'entry_points' key in construct.yaml (a list of binary names to wrap), and the construction of a directory of wrapper scripts corresponding to each entry point. This directory could then be added to the path upon installation, rather than the $PREFIX/bin directory.

Does this use case go against the intended purpose of constructor as a way to distribute Conda distributions? (An end user would not necessarily even be aware they were installing a Conda env). If so, it might be possible to build this functionality separately.

[mcg1969]

@tjd2002 I know this is an older issue but I've tagged it as an enhancement, and with this stale issue sweep I'm doing perhaps it will get some attention. I think there is genuine potential here for this to be useful if carefully crafted.

On Windows, we have the menuinst tool that allows Start Menu items to be created, that is somewhat similar to this. I think for Windows you could come very close to an installer that provides a standalone executable.

For Linux and macOS you'd have to think of something different—perhaps installing scripts into ~/bin or /usr/local/bin that call appropriate conda run commands.

[mcg1969]

A closely related issue from @raphaeljolivet #330

Is there a way to package any other file (like a Notebook for instance) ?

Ideally, I would like to ship a python Notebook with all its dependencies and have Jupyter to be opened on it automatically. Can this be achieved ?

Thanks for your help.

Effectively, this is the same because the "application" in question is just jupyter notebook $PREFIX/notebook.ipynb.

[github-actions]

Hi there, thank you for your contribution!

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Thanks!

[tjd2002]

Please reopen: enhancement request still valuable