Thus, it's looking like things could be on track to split the user and maintainer base in two, with pip bearing the legacy burden and perhaps not seeing the improvements. Are we okay with that future?
This'll be a sad day. pip is still used as an installer by other build system where using pipenv is simply not a possibility.
I am not quite sure I understand why you’d think so. pip has been bearing the legacy burden for years, and if this is the future (not saying it is), it would more like just another day in the office for pip users, since nothing is changing.
pip not seeing any improvements is something I think will be sad. I don't use pipenv, but use poetry which uses pip behind the scenes to do installation. I also use flit. For either of those cases I would think it sad that pipenv splits from pip, and then developers of alternate tooling around building packages (but not installing) don't get new improvements because "pip is legacy".
pipenv doesn't work in various scenarios, and trying to shoehorn it into those scenarios is just wrong especially since it wasn't designed to do those things.
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