[eesmith]

Sure. But PyPI provides zero details on the process, I don't use 2FA for anything else in my life, no one is paying me to care, I find making PyPI releases tedious because I inevitably make mistakes in my release process, I have a strong aversion to centralization and dependencies[1][2].

I tell people to "pip install -i $MY_SITE $MY_PACKAGE". I can tell from my download logs that this is open to dependency confusion attacks as I can see all the 404s from attempts to, for example, install NumPy from my server. To be clear, the switch to 2FA was only the triggering straw - I was already migrating my packages off of PyPI.

Finally, I sell a source license for a commercial product (which is not the one which got me started with PyPI). My customers install it via their internally-hosted PyPI mirrors.

I provide a binary package with a license manager for evaluation purposes, and as a marketing promotion. As such, I really want them to come to my web site, see the documentation and licensing options, and contact me. I think making it easier to express as a dependency via PyPI does not help my sales, and actually believe the extra intermediation likely hinders my sales.

[1] I dislike dependencies so much that I figured out how to make a PEP 517 compatible version that doesn't need to contact PyPI simply to install a local package. Clearly I will not become a Rust developer.

[2] PyPI support depends on GitHub issues. I regard Microsoft as a deeply immoral company, and a threat to personal and national data sovereignty, which means I will not sign up for a GitHub account. When MS provides IT support for the upcoming forced mass deportations, I will have already walked away from Omelas.

[zvr]

Have you maybe documented what you have done, so that others who want to follow the same path can look up some information?

[eesmith]

No, I haven't. The main idea is to create your own in-tree build backend, described at https://peps.python.org/pep-0517/#in-tree-build-backends .

In short, use "backend-path" to include a subdirectory which contains your local copies of setuptools, wheel, etc. Create a file with the build hooks appropriate for "backend-path". Have that those hooks import the actual hooks in setuptools. Finally, set your "requires" to [].

Doing this means taking on a support burden of maintaining setuptools, wheels, etc. yourself. You'll also need to include their copyright statements in any distribution, even though the installed code doesn't use them.

(As I recall, that "etc" is hiding some effort to track down and install the full list of packages dragged in, but right now I don't have ready access to that code base.)

[zvr]

Thanks for the info.