APIs required by Tensorboard ext (as well as Jupyter ext)

[DonJayamanne]

There are a few requirements in Tensorboard (& Jupyter ext), and I will not create separate issues for each of the APIs as the solution/API exposed could end up being different.

Requirements

• Ability to install packages
• Ability to detect whether packages are installed
• Ability to get version of packages
• Ability to run Python code (spawning kernels, etc)

Proposed solutions

• Provide an API to manage packages
• Provide an API to return
  • Activated env vars of Python env
  • Paths to the tools such as conda, poetry, etc
• Short term
  • Leave existing tensorboard package installation code in Python extension
  • Expose some command or the like that can be used by Tensorboard (to detect/install tensorboard package)
  • This temporary solution can be in place until we get an API sorted out,

Note:

• Detecting whether a package is installed and getting their versions can be done with just a single api getActivatedEnvVars
• Installation of packages is what is complex

Related issues

• Provide and API that returns the activate environment variables merged with variables from .env files #20663
• Provide an API to install Python into an empty Conda environment #20495
• Add an API to expose the tools such as Conda , PyEnv, etc #21732
• Support installing pip if not found when installing Jupyter packages vscode-jupyter#14569

@karrtikr @karthiknadig /cc

[karthiknadig]

The sort term solution looks fine.

Activated env vars of Python env

Is the current getEnvironmentVariables public API not enough here?

[DonJayamanne]

Is the current getEnvironmentVariables public API not enough here?

Nope, that only returns env varialbes from the .env file, not from the active Python environment.
I need one that returns variables from an activated python environment.

[karthiknadig]

@karrtikr I thought you updated this to include the .venv env variables also?

[karrtikr]

Nope, we do not know for sure how activation will look until experiment is finalized, hence we haven't exposed the APIs yet.

[DonJayamanne]

I too thought it was done, and I feel the method getEnvironmentVariables doesn't belong under environments or should be renamed (too late for either one).
I think @karthiknadig too made the same mistake

Unless of course one reads the comments

[DonJayamanne]

ok until experiment is finalized, hence we haven't exposed the APIs yet.

Please can you point me to that code,
Interested in that, thanks