`pyodide xbuildenv search --json` option

[agriyakhetarpal]

Description

The pyodide xbuildenv search command currently prints out a formatted table of values:

❯ pyodide xbuildenv search

currently returns

Starting new HTTPS connection (1): raw.githubusercontent.com:443
https://raw.githubusercontent.com:443 "GET /pyodide/pyodide/main/pyodide-cross-build-environments.json HTTP/11" 200 917
Version         Python          Emscripten      pyodide-build                   Compatible
----------      ----------      ----------      -------------------------       ----------
0.27.0a2        3.12.1          3.1.58          0.26.0 -                        Yes       
0.26.2          3.12.1          3.1.58          0.26.0 -                        Yes       
0.26.1          3.12.1          3.1.58          0.26.0 -                        Yes       
0.26.0          3.12.1          3.1.58          0.26.0 -                        Yes    

(Side note: is the pyodide-build version wrong? It's returning 0.26.0 - for all the versions, and not the latest pyodide-build version at the time of writing – which is version 0.28.0?)

It would be great to get the same output in JSON – for example, something like

{
  "environments": [
    {
      "version": "0.27.0a2",
      "python": "3.12.1",
      "emscripten": "3.1.58",
      "pyodide_build": "0.26.0",
      "compatible": true
    },
    {
      "version": "0.26.2",
      "python": "3.12.1",
      "emscripten": "3.1.58",
      "pyodide_build": "0.26.0",
      "compatible": true
    },
    {
      "version": "0.26.1",
      "python": "3.12.1",
      "emscripten": "3.1.58",
      "pyodide_build": "0.26.0",
      "compatible": true
    },
    {
      "version": "0.26.0",
      "python": "3.12.1",
      "emscripten": "3.1.58",
      "pyodide_build": "0.26.0",
      "compatible": true
    }
  ]
}

Motivation

A JSON-based output would be machine-readable and serialisable into a Python script at runtime. This might be useful for cibuildwheel, where currently it is assumed that the Pyodide version and the pyodide-build version go hand-in-hand (it has to be updated since the unvendoring, which I'm working on).

[agriyakhetarpal]

Another thing I noticed is that https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pyodide/pyodide/main/pyodide-cross-build-environments.json notes the existence of a "min_pyodide_build_version" key, which is where we check for compatibility of the Pyodide version with the pyodide-build version.

However, pyodide xbuildenv search for any given pyodide-build installation (whether that is for v0.28.0 or any upcoming versions) will print just the compatible Pyodide versions anyway and not the incompatible ones, so that column in the table seems redundant – unless I am missing something here?

Edit: just noticed that we have an --all sub-option, too, which is the one that returns incompatible versions.

[agriyakhetarpal]

We already have the structure for this feature in place, so this should be doable. I'll take a look at it.

[ryanking13]

Sounds good. Thanks for working on this!