Allow `*` in `MatchSpec` names

[jaimergp]

Checklist

• I added a descriptive title
• I searched open requests and couldn't find a duplicate

What is the idea?

Rattler's MatchSpec does not support * in package names right now. Somehow it does allow * as the only character for the whole MatchSpec.

Why is this needed?

This is useful when we use MatchSpec as the query language for searches (and not installs). For example, if I want to find all python-* package in my channel, we can search conda search python-*; or if we want to list all the R packages in my environment: conda list r-*. Right now I can't implement this in py-rattler.

What should happen?

rattler.MatchSpec("python-*") should work. The PackageName object may need to learn a few tricks or perhaps the name field may need to allow different types (if a * is detected, then is a GlobString or something like that).

Additional Context

No response

[baszalmstra]

This is actually supported but rattler doesnt support this everywhere. For instance the Gateway object doesnt support this, not does the solver implementation. But it is possible to parse this. You have to manually opt-in to this behavior at the moment by passing exact_names_only=False in the MatchSpec constructor.

See #1480

[baszalmstra]

> pixi exec --with py-rattler ipython
In [2]: from rattler import MatchSpec

In [3]: MatchSpec("python-*")
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
InvalidMatchSpecException                 Traceback (most recent call last)
Cell In[3], line 1
----> 1 MatchSpec("python-*")

File ~/.cache/rattler/cache/cached-envs-v0/ipython-792eb12de8b5e96a/lib/python3.14/site-packages/rattler/match_spec/match_spec.py:117, in MatchSpec.__init__(self, spec, strict, exact_names_only, experimental_extras, experimental_conditionals)
     92 """
     93 Create a new version spec.
     94
   (...)    114 ```
    115 """
    116 if isinstance(spec, str):
--> 117     self._match_spec = PyMatchSpec(
    118         spec, strict, exact_names_only, experimental_extras, experimental_conditionals
    119     )
    120 else:
    121     raise TypeError(
    122         f"MatchSpec constructor received unsupported type {type(spec).__name__!r} for the 'spec' parameter"
    123     )

InvalidMatchSpecException: "python-*" looks like a glob but only exact package names are allowed, package names can only contain 0-9, a-z, A-Z, -, _, or .

In [4]: MatchSpec("python-*", exact_names_only=False)
Out[4]: MatchSpec("python-*")

[baszalmstra]

See also https://rattler.prefix.dev/py-rattler/match_spec/#rattler.match_spec.match_spec.MatchSpec.__init__

[baszalmstra]

@pavelzw I dont think we have an issue that lists where support for globs/regexes should still be added right? Should we make that otherwise? From the top of my head its in the Gateway and the solver.

[pavelzw]

there is #1723 but this is definitely not everything. glob support in the solver is also missing (but i'm not sure whether it's actually useful there)

[jaimergp]

conda only supports this in conda update and remove, and it's used to match the installed packages already. So I don't think it's needed in the solver per se.

Gateway.query() should support it though.

[jaimergp]

With exact_names_only=False I can implement what I need for conda update, remove, and search --envs. Still need support in the Gateway for the .query() method though. Thanks for the tips!

[pavelzw]

Repodata gateway support would also be helpful in conda-mirror. Then we could mirror globs of conda-forge without the need to fetch the whole repodata

[pavelzw]

there is now rattler search 'python*' (#2036). this feature will land in pixi soon as well. xref prefix-dev/pixi#5442

but i think other than that this is done now. feel free to ping us again if you think otherwise @jaimergp

[jaimergp]

Can't wait to give it a try in the next release, thanks!