pip.conf is not removed upon uninstalling nvidia-pyindex

[lmmx]

Hey there, was very grateful to this package when trying to install a tricky CUDA/PyTorch/TensorFlow combo the other day, however the past few days since then I've noticed that all my pip installs were going slowly.

It turned out that the cause was the pip.conf file, whose header comment notes:

# This file has been autogenerated or modified by NVIDIA PyIndex.

and which further down includes

no-cache-dir = true

This was the cause of my slow installation (not caching any package binaries), and importantly this persisted even after removing all copies of nvidia-pyindex from all my conda environments.

I don't know if you'd agree but I see this as a bug: leaving pip.conf on a system, which then modifies the caching behaviour, is regrettable.

I thought I should open an issue to make the suggestion of removing it upon uninstallation (I'm not sure if it's possible to "clean up" after a package, but perhaps you know).

Anyway, thanks again, and of course it is at your discretion to change this or not, just wanted to bring to your attention! 👍

[DEKHTIARJonathan]

Hi @lmmx,
First of all thanks for your comments. I'm happy that our work is useful to you.

So a few points, I'm gonna invest some time looking into it, though it seems that I won't be able to remove no-cache-dir = true. Namely because it would cache nvidia-pyindex which would break the mechanism. I might have an idea, I'll give it a look and keep you posted.

For the other part

I thought I should open an issue to make the suggestion of removing it upon uninstallation (I'm not sure if it's possible to "clean up" after a package, but perhaps you know).

I totally 1000% agree. And I tried any possible way for it. Unfortunately there's no way to have a "hook" or a script to execute on pip package uninstall automatically.

There is an undocumented feature that you can trigger manually doing exactly what you are asking for: nvidia_pyindex uninstall.
It doesn't uninstall the pip package. It removes and clean up the changes

[lmmx]

Aha, that sounds useful! I removed them all across my system now, but if/when I reinstall I'll just use that then. I'll leave this for you to close in case you want to look into it any more. Cheers 😃

[DEKHTIARJonathan]

yeah so unfortunately ... Won't be able to remove no-cache-dir = true. Either we have it or we don't. I can't refine ...
Though, without giving up too much, we are working on something to simplify the process (and eventually get rid of nvidia-pyindex) so stay tuned ;) Can't give you an ETA. But hopefully some time this year. Feel free to close the issue, I don't really see any way I can fix any of the aforementioned issues (kind of by design).

[DEKHTIARJonathan]

@lmmx FYI I release a small bugfix for the uninstall command inspired by your comment ;) So now you should be able to use nvidia-pyindex==1.0.7

[lmmx]

Ooh exciting, good luck with this mysterious new development, I’ll keep my eyes peeled! 🦉