I also want this. I want to be able to tell my collaborators in "myexperiment" to do something like:

pip install myexperiment-spack

This would then cause spack (core) and, say, spack-repo and spack-commands to be installed via dependency resolution. Then,

spack install myexperiment

I also want to do

import spack

from my own Python code.

Things may have changed now, but from when I tried to work toward these goals I remember these issues:

Getting to an import spack required not much change. It involved factoring out some globals defined in __init__.py files.
The biggest challenge for a Python package of Spack itself is to factor how Spack locates its own package modules (package.py) and I think also its commands are in the same situation. My preference would be to make both separate packages and have them located via sys.path. Also, Spack's temporary build areas and final installation areas needed configurability.
Whatever factoring is needed, things have to work more or less the same as they do now for people wanting to still run Spack directly out of its source area. Personally, I'd prefer to work out of a Python source area using the standard:

python setup.py develop

But, I guess a lot of people don't want to change so the current usage patterns must be also retained. There were no unit tests covering such usage patterns no rigorous way to measure success or failure which added to the difficulty. It's actually here where I got bogged down and gave up.

The coding to get through 1 and 2 is, I think, the easier part. Understand what current usage patterns and assumptions can not be violated will take time and communication and extra code complexity. Ultimately, working through the laborious process to get even simple pull requests accepted is now what deters me from trying to make this level of contribution again. Maybe there is some way to make the needed changes in small, progressive PRs but when I went down this road, I saw the need to reorganize things in fairly large, cohesive steps. I suggest that anyone attempting this should have a solid game plan with the core devs before getting started.

Release Spack on PyPI #1385

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