[Distutils] Expectations on how pip needs to change for Python 3.4

[Donald Stufft]

On Jul 13, 2013, at 12:59 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:

> Could we just start to move away from an executable script and start promoting rather aggressively -m instead? It truly solves this problem and since the results are tied to the Python executable used (i.e. where something gets installed) it disambiguates what Python binary pip is going to work with (something I have trouble with thanks to Python 2 and 3 both being installed and each with their own pip installation). I realize older Python versions can't do this (I believe 2.6 and older can't for packages) but at least in the situation we are discussing here of bundling pip it's not an issue.


I find the -m interface ugly as a primary cli api. It's ok for bonus functionality (ala json.tool) and debugging utilities (ala SimpleServer) but as a developer of user facing tools I don't think I'd ever want to tell them that they should use ``python -m`` to execute my tool.

It's also a massive change in functionality from the existing pip interface. ``pip install`` is what everyone uses. 

The point is more or less moot though unless you're advocating not including an executable script at all. Because pip is already able to be executed with ``python -m pip`` however I don't believe i've seen anyone use that in practice. It also provides the "pip" and "pip-X.Y" commands which should probably be normalized to "pip", "pipX", and "pipX.Y".

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Donald Stufft
PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA

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