Hi Paul, > I don't understand the pip hate. Why don't you guys try and, you know, > figure out *why* these tools were invented. It (for sure) is overly > simplistic, but it's there for a reason.
It's pretty obvious why these tools were invented -- I think everyone appreciates the difficulties of installing and distributing software across different platforms, particularly legacy ones with no native concept of package management. I think it's also safe to assume that the python packaging list is probably acutely aware of API problems in python modules that would make it useful in virtualenvs too. However, we're currently in a situation where users can very easily make an absolute mess of their set up without realising that's what they are going to do and it then becomes Debian's user support problem. We see this on a regular enough basis -- packages stop working and the python stackdumps show modules with incompatible APIs being loaded from /usr/local/. (#703874 is just one example of this that I have to hand -- I'm sure the BTS has many more and we see a few per week like this in #debian) Who gets the blame for mess made? The Debian project and its developers. Who ends up helping users clean up the mess? The Debian project and its developers. Pip can as useful as it wants in virtualenvs but it already has a lot of historical baggage attached to it that is mostly associated copious amounts of time spent trying to fix the mess it makes on Debian machines. That's why you have pip hate. For better or for worse, proposals to make further use of pip carry all this historical baggage with them. As suggested elsewhere in this thread changing pip so that it was difficult to do things system-wide would help with this. cheers Stuart PS While not directly related to pip (but in a quite similar vein), in the last week, I've seen the exact problem below *twice*: "I tried to install python2.7 on my squeeze box like this https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2011-May/603818.html and now I get: update-alternatives: error: cannot stat /usr/bin/python2.7/bin/python2.7: Not a directory Help!" tl;dr: trying to install jessie's python into squeeze doesn't work out so well and creating alternatives is harder than it looks when you're blindly copying instructions from the web. Suggestions on upstream mailing lists from people who either don't know what they're doing or don't fully explain the dangers aren't always the best things to follow. *sigh* PPS Virtualenvs are another commonly cited use case for pip, but virtualenvs are mostly a short way of saying "we don't care about API stability" (your own story of the incompatibilities of django versions is an illustration of this); they're an interesting technical solution to a poor development model that focuses on developers getting high on finding the perfect solution at the expense of the users of the code. Every user of that module has to either: keep altering their own code to match new APIs, or try to insulate their code from API changes by using virtualenvs, or NIH it instead. So sure, virtualenv+pip is a valid use case for pip, but it should hardly be considered the pinnacle of python's achievements. But I think I'll leave the rest of that rant (and the bit about what you shoudl do in a virtualenv when you need both modules A and B but module A needs C version 1.0 and module B needs C version 1.1) for another day. -- Stuart Prescott http://www.nanonanonano.net/ stu...@nanonanonano.net Debian Developer http://www.debian.org/ stu...@debian.org GPG fingerprint BE65 FD1E F4EA 08F3 23D4 3C6D 9FE8 B8CD 71C5 D1A8 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-python-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/l1dh0e$al9$1...@ger.gmane.org
