Following the discussion from #6081, I've successfully created a plugin system for pip that seems to work fine with existing packages.

Here is the branch I'm working on (see - plugin.py)

How it works?

The search_plugin_scripts() function looks for executables prefixed with PIP_PLUGIN_SCRIPT_PREFIX (currently "pip-plugin-"). So it catches executables like pip-plugin-compile.
It lists them in a 3rd party plugin section at --help. Auto-complete also works as of now.
When invoking the script, it provides a single JSON encoded string, which helps the plugin determine the environment in which pip is running (see here).
From there on, the plugin is free to do anything with this information.

This architecture allows for plugins that are independent of the actual package, which I think is quite nice.

It also solves the major recurring problem related to cross-virtualenv execution. Any plugins written with this architecture can be made so that they only need to be installed once on the global python, and then used from within a virtualenv.

I have also added a --disable-plugins switch.

How to actually write plugins?

I've created a small package that will generate a plugin. It allows exposing an existing python CLI as a pip plugin.

Also, Here is a proof of concept that contains some popular packages wrapped as plugins. (including $ pip upgrade!)

It's obviously not ready to be merged. I need to run the tests (and write new ones).

There is no documentation either.

Add an upgrade-all command #4551

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