Make micropip.py output a helpful message when installing a CPython package is attempted

[aivarannamaa]

I'm not sure whether this work should start from upip or here, but I'll raise the issue anyway.

At the moment micropip.py (and probably also upip) doesn't give a meaningful error message when user tries to install a non-micropython package (for an example see thonny/thonny#1330).

It would be nice if micropip.py anticipated it and said something like "Package X doesn't look like a MicroPython package"

[peterhinch]

Do you have any ideas on how this might be achieved?

I'm not sure whether this work should start from upip or here

To answer this micropip is a port of upip: if its maintainers implement new features I will aim to migrate them to micropip. It might therefore be best to raise the issue against upip. Further, its developers may know a way to actually accomplish this.

[aivarannamaa]

Do you have any ideas on how this might be achieved?

What about catching all errors when the package name doesn't start with a known good prefix ("micropython-", "pycopy-") and appending "Are you sure this package is meant for MicroPython?" to the error message?

[peterhinch]

Possibly. As I said I don't want to make micropip functionality differ from that of upip. I therefore suggest you raise enhancement requests against upip. If they are accepted, I will port them.