Documentation of pip's internals

[pradyunsg]

This is only for developers and contributors. Using pip's internals from third party projects is not and, for the foreseeable future, will not be a supported way of using pip.

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Here's how I'd planned to structure it while working on the overall architecture docs, at PyCon 2019:

• add development/architecture/ to the html documentation
• index is a table of contents + a 1 or 2 paragraph overview + a note that pip's internals are not for external consumers but maintainers and contributors.
• each component within the codebase can get its own dedicated page/section within that as necessary.
  • think download, finder, vcs, build, install, configuration, uninstall, resolution etc.
  • Example url: development/architecture/download.html
• A contributor friendly guide that connects the dots for all these parts.

Originally posted by @pradyunsg in #6787 (comment)

[chrahunt]

Related to #6637.

[pradyunsg]

Thanks @chrahunt! :)

[pradyunsg]

I'll be writing a few of the component-specific deep-dive pages/sections in the coming weeks.

My current plan is to start with the following areas (in order of increasing complexity):

• Configuration File Handling
  • pip._internal.configuration module
• Command Line Interface
  • pip._internal.cli package contents
• Build Logic
  • pip._internal.operations.build package
  • pip._internal.wheel_builder module
  • pip._internal.distributions package
  • pip._internal.pyproject module
  • pip._internal.req.req_install module (only parts of)

I expect I'll be pulling my hair out by the time I'm writing down the details of the build logic, due to how complicated that topic is. This is a very tentative plan though, and I might end up pivoting to something else after CLI.

[pradyunsg]

FWIW, this didn't happen but, hey, instead I got to close #988. :)

[pradyunsg]

Closing this out since I'm no longer interested in doing this. If someone else is, please holler here or file a new issue referencing this. :)