Prompt to install Pip when pip not available

[DonJayamanne]

If Pip isn't available then users cannot install python packages (for non-conda, non-pipenv, poetry projects).

Suggestion - why not ask the user to install pip. This way users can install the packages.

Today we (Jupyter extension) know plenty of users do not install ipykernel & we believe this is because pip isnt' available on their systems. Added issue to gather better telemetry for this #15933

Either way having a prompt to install pip would be a good thing (i think)
If you're ok with this, we'd like to get this in as this would help with our OKR of improve kernel startup success rates (i.e user will be able to install ipykernel once they isntall pip, today they just get an error message from Python extension about this, suggestion is to unblock the user rather than letting them figure out the solution).

@brettcannon @luabud /cc

[joyceerhl]

This is especially likely to happen on Codespaces VMs running older flavors of Linux, e.g. I just dealt with missing pip on a Codespace earlier today.

[luabud]

Can we show this just before we detect we need to install something, instead of prompting on load? The VS Code team has asked us to avoid showing notifications on load, it's better to show it just in time/when needed.

At the same time, I would like to avoid scenarios like the following:

1. User clicks to format document
2. We show "formatter not installed" prompt
3. User clicks "install"
4. We show "pip is not installed" prompt

Ideally we'd show the "pip is not installed" notification before the "tool is not installed" notification, and in a perfect world we'd remember they wanted to install that tool and start the installation right after pip finished downloading 😅 but I imagine this would be too complicated?

[DonJayamanne]

an we show this just before we detect we need to install something,

Yes thats exactly the plan.
Today we display error when installation fails, but my suggestion is to display the new prompt to ask user to install pip..

[DonJayamanne]

Ideally we'd show the "pip is not installed" notification before the "tool is not installed" notification, and in a perfect world we'd remember they wanted to install that tool and start the installation right after pip finished

Agreed, and I want that perfect world

[brettcannon]

Changing this to "needs spec" since there's a lot to think through before attempting to do this.

[karrtikr]

Do we still need this with most installation now moved to Jupyter? I think we've moved out most use cases for this, hence closing. But if I'm wrong please feel free to reopen.