Managing and Switching PyPI Mirrors with the Oh My Zsh pypi Plugin

Choosing an appropriate PyPI mirror can significantly improve package download speed, especially for users in China where network latency may be high. This article introduces the pypi plugin designed for Oh My Zsh users, which offers commands to list, switch, and test PyPI mirrors.

Plugin Overview

The pypi plugin is a lightweight yet powerful tool that adds a set of commands to Oh My Zsh, allowing quick switching between different PyPI mirror sources and testing their connectivity.

Installation Steps

Install via Git

Open a terminal and clone the plugin repository into the custom plugins directory of Oh My Zsh:

git clone https://github.com/belingud/pypi ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/pypi

Edit the ~/.zshrc file and add pypi to the plugins list: plugins=(... pypi ...) Save the file and reload the Zsh configuration:

source ~/.zshrc

How to Use

After installation, the following commands are available:

List Available Mirrors

Run pypi list to display all supported PyPI mirrors and their URLs.

pypi list

Switch to a Specific Mirror

Use pypi use <shortname>, where <shortname> is the alias of the desired mirror (e.g., aliyun for Alibaba Cloud):

pypi use aliyun

Test Mirror Connectivity

Verify a mirror's availability with pypi ping <shortname|url>. You can provide either the alias or the full URL: pypi ping tsinghua or

pypi ping https://pypi.org/simple/

Supported Mirror List

pypi:            https://pypi.org/simple/
aliyun          阿里云
tencent         腾讯
huawei          华为
163             网易
volces          火山
cernet          中国教科研网校园联合镜像站
tsinghua        清华大学
sustech         南方科技大学
bfsu            北京外国语大学
nju             南京大学
dnui            大连东软信息学院
pku             北京大学
njtech          南京工业大学
nyist           南阳理工
sjtu            上海交大
zju             浙江大学
jlu             吉林大学
testpypi

Mirrors that are only accessible within a campus intranet are not supported.

Precautions

Ensure the short name you provide when switching mirrors is valid.

Use the ping command to check reachability before switching to a new mirror.

Getting Help

For detailed usage of each command, add -h or --help to the command, e.g.:

pypi use -h

Conclusion

The pypi plugin makes managing and switching PyPI mirrors straightforward. For more information or issues, visit the plugin's GitHub repository.