automagically install missing imports

Is this a good idea? Probably not.

Should you use this? Probably not.

importation hijacks the import keyword in Python to test if the module is importable, and auto-installs missing packages.

If you're in a virtual environment, it installs it to your current virtual environment. If not, it creates one at __pypackages__/importation, adds it to sys.path so packages are discoverable, and installs missing packages there.

It takes PEP-582 "Python local packages directory" one step further by resolving packages in __pypackages__ plus auto-installing to them.

> python -m pip install importation --user

Just import it.

The act of importing it has the side effect of hijacking Python's import system.

# example.py
import importation  # noqa: 401
import httpx

print("module resolved at", httpx.__file__)

Then

$ python test.py
# module resolved at /home/__pypackages__/importation/lib/python3.8/site-packages/httpx/__init__.py

Another example with an interactive terminal:

>>> import httpx
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'httpx'
>>> import importation
>>> import httpx
>>> print(httpx)
<module 'httpx' from '/home/importation/__pypackages__/importation/lib/python3.8/site-packages/httpx/__init__.py'>

To debug or view details of what it's doing set the IMPORTATION_VERBOSE environment variable:

$ IMPORTATION_VERBOSE=1 python test.py

This has not been tested beyond this extremely simple example.

This package was inspired by PEP-582 and magicimport.py.