Discussion: installed tools

While parsing project metadata can be done without dependencies, making artefacts generally involves calling the appropriate tool as a subprocess. If the tool is not available, we currently just return the error (probably FileNotFound).

We have some code here for detecting and potentially saving whether certain commands are available or not, for the current environment, and this function to provide a reasonable message if not.

The question is, how best to sensibly know what is installed and how to apply that the to project types and their buildable artifacts. Should we be considering other (venv/conda) environments that might be lying around, or do the project management tools need to be available globally? What about other tools (like the webapp launchers, flask et al) that explicitly live within a python environment?

Start by reading the command-availability code in src/projspec/utils.py around lines 153 and 209. Trace how project types and buildable artifacts would use those checks, then clarify whether global tools, virtual environments, or conda environments are supported. Done means the supported environment-selection behavior and missing-tool messaging are agreed and documented or implemented.