[FIXED] How can pip install packages which are missing from it's index?

Issue

According to Chris' answer (most upvotes) to this question, pip index versions package_name is a reliable way to find the versions available for a given package.

But I discovered something peculiar... It seems that pip install works for packages like tb-nightly & tf-nightly-macos. Yet when I try pip index versions tf-nightly-macos or pip index versions tb-nightly then it tells me ERROR: No matching distribution found for tb-nightly.

How can pip download/install packages which are missing from its index? And moreover is there a partial/full fix to see package versions for all/more packages which are visible for install/download by pip?

P.S. My default index url is: https://pypi.org/simple. Also system info is: MacOS Ventura 13.4.1, M1 chips, python 3.9.13, (but likely applies elsewhere too).

Solution

I would try: python -m pip index versions --pre tb-nightly.

This is an excerpt of the output for python -m pip index versions --help:

--pre Include pre-release and development versions. By default, pip only finds stable versions.

Typically, the nightly suffix in distribution related topics means that it is about pre-releases (specifically ones that are built every night), not an official release. And indeed the versions listed by the command above seem all to have the marking of a pre-release, for example 2.15.0a20231013 where the a means it is an alpha release.

Answered By - sinoroc