How to use pixi global install --git for packages without [tool.pixi.*] sections?

[agostini01]

Hi,

I’ve been learning Pixi over the past few weeks.
So far, I’ve had great success using global installs for packages uploaded to conda-forge.

Today, I tried converting the following uv command to Pixi in order to install a package directly from GitHub using --git:

uv tool install specify-cli --from git+https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git

I translated this to:

pixi global install specify-cli --git https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git

However, I received the following error:

No global environments found.
 WARN Couldn't install specify-cli
  × failed to extract metadata for package 'specify-cli'
  ╰─▶   × Missing table in manifest pyproject.toml:
        │ Any of the following sections is required:
        │ * tool.pixi.workspace
        │ * tool.pixi.project
        │ * tool.pixi.package
         ╭─[/home/developer/.cache/rattler/cache/bld/git-v0/checkouts/f00d9720d696c13e/89f4b0b/pyproject.toml:1:1]
       1 │ [project]
         · ─
       2 │ name = "specify-cli"
         ╰────
        help: Check your manifest for a [tool.pixi.*] table. See https://pixi.sh/latest/python/pyproject_toml for more information.
      
Error:   × Some environments couldn't be installed.

Then I tried:

pixi global install --git https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git

But got a similar error:

Error:   × failed to infer package name
  ├─▶ failed to get build backend metadata for package name inference
  ╰─▶ Missing table in manifest pyproject.toml:
      Any of the following sections is required:
      * tool.pixi.workspace
      * tool.pixi.project
      * tool.pixi.package

---

Question

Is it possible to perform a pixi global install --git for packages that do not contain any [tool.pixi.*] sections in their pyproject.toml?
If so, how can this be done?

[jwittenbach]

I hit the same issue when trying to use pixi global add -e [my-env] --git [my-package], which I imagine is related. Since pixi in a non-global setting has no problem adding dependencies on git packages that are not themselves managed by pixi I was surprised that this is a limitation for global environments and it would be great if it were not so.