Create metapackage for testing bundle compatibility

[Czaki]

🚀 Feature

I would love to see metapackage that will simplify reconstruction bundled app packages version. Something like oldest-supported-numpy but with bind all versions of packages from the bundle (like PySide2, numpy etc)

Motivation

I meet an error that was not present when using the latest PySide2, but present in 5.13.2. But If the user is using a bundle then I cannot ask him for the update of some core packages

Pitch

metapackage that will pin core napari dependencies and be versioned in the same order as napari, so for example napari-bundle-packages==0.4.16 will provide exact versions for napari==0.4.16

Alternatives

each plugin maintainer could manually control such list :(

Additional context

[jni]

Thanks for raising this @Czaki! We have had many such discussions about this but I don't think ever written them down in an issue. I think this would be good fodder for a NAP (#4299), which would detail things like which packages should be included in the metapackage, what the criterion is for inclusion, how often we update the versions, etc.

Do you think this is only for "base" packages (ie napari's dependencies) or also for common ecosystem packages (scikit-image, tensorflow, etc)?

[Czaki]

Do you think this is only for "base" packages (ie napari's dependencies) or also for common ecosystem packages (scikit-image, tensorflow, etc)?

I think about these packages that come with the bundle and cannot be upgraded.

If I good understand the packages like scikit-image or TensorFlow will be installed only when some plugin requires it and in the latest version available on conda so it cannot be easily pinned?

Such dependencies pininig could be also provided as extras.

Related issue that I open for cockiecutter napari/napari-plugin-template#13

[jni]

If we're only talking about the bundle libraries then I suggest we simply pin them in the setup.cfg and packages can test against napari[bundle]==0.4.16?

[jaimergp]

Awesome, this is one of the things that I wanted to start talking about in napari/napari#1001 (comment)

One of the things I am doing next is creating a conda metapackage with run_constrained metadata for each bundle release. This is a bit flexible than simply "versions used to build version x.y.z bundle", but also their API/ABI pinnings.

[jaimergp]

Adding native support in constructor at conda/constructor#595

[jaimergp]

Reopening because I am not done with this (although the basics are covered).