Commands to manage the pip cache

[pfmoore]

Creating this as a bit of a brain dump, and a reminder for consideration at some point.

The pip cache is basically an opaque area containing HTTP response data and built wheels. While it's not huge, on Windows it's in %LOCALAPPDATA% which is often on the root drive, which can be a limited-size SSD (I don't know where it's located on non-Windows systems, but I assume it would be similar).

Tools to manage and/or housekeep the cache would be useful. As a basic suggestion:

1. Print the location (and maybe the size) of the cache.
2. Clear the cache (with maybe options to just clear HTTP, or just clear wheels).
3. Time-based housekeeping (delete anything older than a certain time).
4. Python version based housekeeping of wheels (delete any wheels for CPython 3.5).

Much of this can be done with OS based tools or 3rd party Python code, so maybe a minimal solution would be to provide a pip info command that allowed querying pip for the cache location, and add a little bit of documentation confirming what's OK (e.g., that blindly deleting files or whole directories from the HTTP cache based on timestamp is safe).

[pradyunsg]

#4685 :)

[pfmoore]

@*&%$ I'm playing well this week, aren't I? Thanks.

[pradyunsg]

Hahah. You're welcome! :)

[lock]

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