Improvements in package dependency situation for users

[juliasilge]

I'm not sure if we can make changes in the package itself, or if we only have documentation options here, but internal users have reported they aren't getting all needed packages when they install pins. For example, a user needed to manually install fsspec and appdirs.

Also, can we revisit the message that users see when they need to install a package specific to a certain, say, file type? Is the message they see when they need pyarrow clear and helpful? Any improvement possible?

[machow]

fsspec and appdirs are install dependencies in (setup.cfg), and should get installed when someone uses pip install pins. I wonder what message they are seeing? I wonder if it's a dependency resolution issue (which would cause an error on pip install, but can sometimes be finagled by installing each package in steps)?

The message when pyarrow isn't available is probably an import error, so could definitely be improved!

[bgbutler]

The issue that I ran into is that when I initially installed/ran pins, everything ran fine. The new internal workbench has quarto built-in (pre-installed). I just got simple errors about fsspec and appdirs needed but not installed. I did manual installs and it worked fine.

I think that some of this may be posit.workbench.it issues, but I will keep you informed. I think that there are stability issues with that environment.