Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan <at> gmail.com> writes:
On 16 Sep 2013 20:06, "Antoine Pitrou" <antoine <at> python.org> wrote:
Hi,
Donald Stufft <donald <at> stufft.io> writes:
This is also a matter of starting as we mean to continue: similar to IDLE (see PEP 434), ``getpip`` will be permanently exempted from the "no new features in maintenance releases" restriction, as it will include (and rely on) upgraded versions of ``pip`` even in maintenance releases.
This sounds rather weird. If the whole point of ``getpip`` is for people to get the latest pip version without it being bundled, the why does ``getpip`` itself need to be upgraded in maintenance releases? (barring bug and compatibility fixes, obviously)
Because getpip contains a complete private copy of pip that it installs in
the "--no-download" case and otherwise uses to download the latest version.
*Technically* you could lock down the getpip shim to prevent feature additions, but I don't see the point in introducing cross-version inconsistencies in maintained versions if we decide the shim should expose more pip features.
Well... Cross-version inconsistencies are the reason we have several maintained versions in the first place. If you upgrade getpip's functionality in maintenance releases, this means someone with Python 2.7.7 won't get the same experience as, e.g., someone with Python 2.7.6 or 2.7.8. It breaks the expectation that maintenance releases are basically substitutable to each other (modulo, of course, bug fixes). It also makes support more complicated for the various Python communities ("wait, which 2.7 version do you have? then your getpip doesn't have that option, you must instead do this and that..."). It will probably also make Python maintenance more difficult for distributors (e.g. Linux distros) which commit to API stability between bugfix versions. Regards Antoine.