On Jul 13, 2013, at 11:00 AM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore@gmail.com> wrote:

Of course, saying explicitly "only the python -m pip command line interface is stable and supported" may well be enough. But didn't we just say that setuptools and distlib depend on the pip API? So either they have special privileges (presumably because they are under the umbrella of the PyPA) or we can't avoid documenting/supporting some API...

I don't think we need this any more than if pip was not pre-installed. So still nice to have for things like chef but not a requirement. setuptools and distlib won't depend on pip, pip will just bundle them (like it already does for distlib).

The idea should be that pip itself has no dependencies because a package manager with dependencies is kind of strange and can easily lead to issues where the package manager breaks and is unifiable (e.g. setuptools breaks and pip can't be used to fix it).

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