`pip download` could create normalized directory structure

[cjcodeproj]

What's the problem this feature will solve?

Some users may work in offline or air-gapped environments, that prevent direct PyPi access. It is still possible to host packages using an internal repository server, as described in Hosting your own simple repository

When new packages from the outside are needed, they are can be retrieved using the pip download command from an online system, which is helpful because it also downloads any dependencies. Then the downloaded files can be imported into the offline environment using a process approved by the organization (like burning to a CD Rom)

It would be helpful if the download command had a feature to automatically create the normalized directory structure in the path that it's downloading to. Then when the files are imported into the offline environment, the directories do not have to be manually created. It would even be possible to run the rsync command from the import media to the internal repository path, which would save time.

Describe the solution you'd like

A simple flag for the pip download command like --manual-directories that builds the directory structure on the fly. So when a user runs pip download twine, it creates a directory named twine, and then downloads the twine package to that path.

Alternative Solutions

None tried.

Additional context

Normalized Names

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the PSF Code of Conduct.

[jsirois]

The flat directory structure produced by pip download can directly be used as a --find-links repository with no further modifications needed. Was that already known but a rejected alternative to using the simple repository layout?

[notatallshaw]

I think it's a reasonable option to have download write the files to a directory structure that could then be used to serve a static simple index, the same option would apply to wheel.

However as @jsirois points out, pip can read from a flat directory, so it's not a critical feature.

As pip is a volunteer project it would require someone to submit a sufficiently high quality PR.