Proposal: Publish specify-cli to PyPI for easier distribution and use

[mbeacom]

Hello! To make the specify-cli tool more accessible to the wider Python community, I'd like to propose publishing it to the Python Package Index (PyPI) under its existing package name, specify-cli.

Why this is valuable

Publishing to PyPI would provide several key benefits:

• Simplified Installation: Users could install the tool with a standard, familiar command: pip install specify-cli.
• Easy Dependency Management: It would be straightforward to include specify-cli in project requirements.txt or pyproject.toml files.
• Improved Discoverability: The package would be searchable on PyPI, increasing its visibility and potential for adoption.
• Standardized Versioning: PyPI provides a central, trusted registry for managing releases and versions.

Implementation and Next Steps

To facilitate discussion, I am opening a pull request alongside this issue that adds the necessary GitHub Actions workflow to automate the publishing process. This workflow uses OIDC trusted publishing, which is the modern, secure method that avoids managing API tokens as secrets.

For this to be merged and enabled, the following steps would be needed:

1. Review the Pull Request: feat: Add PyPi releases #205 -- The accompanying PR contains the full implementation of the workflow for review.
2. Configure Trusted Publishing: In the new PyPI project's settings, you would need to configure it to trust this GitHub repository (github/spec-kit) for publishing. The official guide for this is here: PyPI's Guide to Trusted Publishing.

Example Trust Config in PyPI

The PR is ready for review and contains the complete technical implementation. I'm happy to make any adjustments needed.

Thanks for your consideration and for maintaining this great tool!

@localden If you have any questions about this or need anything, please let me know.

[localden]

Thank you for the help with this, @mbeacom - I love the idea. Something that I need to do here is go through the standard (official) GitHub release channels, so let me check with the team and get back on the required pieces. Appreciate you taking the time to look into this - definitely would make the experience smoother.

[mbeacom]

@localden Sounds good. Please let me know if you need anything to facilitate this!

[johnmbaughman]

This would definitely be a better option than using the current installation path. It took about 3 hours to get it to work on my work computer and I still don't have it working on my personal computer. I've gotten several errors related to not finding the specify-cli module and incompatible python versions using both Python 3.12.9 and 3.13.7. Having this in a more standard installation path would be fantastic; this is such an awesome tool once you get it working...