[Distutils] PEP 439 and pip bootstrap updated

[Carl Meyer]

Hi Richard,

On 07/09/2013 09:47 PM, Richard Jones wrote:
> On 10 July 2013 13:20, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>> On Jul 9, 2013, at 11:16 PM, Richard Jones <r1chardj0n3s at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Firstly, I've just made some additional changes to PEP 439 to include:
>>
>> - installing virtualenv as well (so now pip, setuptools and virtualenv are installed)
>>
>>
>> doesn't "PyEnv" which is bundled with Python 3.3+ replace virtualenv? What's the purpose of including virtualenv in the bootstrap? http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0405/
> 
> It's my understanding that people still install virtualenv in py3k.

They certainly do today, but that's primarily because pyvenv isn't very
useful yet, since the stdlib has no installer and thus a newly-created
pyvenv has no way to install anything in it.

The bootstrap should fix this very problem (i.e. make an installer
available in every newly-created pyvenv) and thus encourage use of
pyvenv (which is simpler, more reliable, and built-in) in place of
virtualenv. I don't think it makes sense for the stdlib bootstrapper to
install an inferior third-party tool instead of using a tool that is now
built-in to the standard library on 3.3+.

Certainly if the bootstrap is ever ported to 2.7 or 3.2, it would make
sense for it to install virtualenv there (or, probably even better, for
pyvenv to be backported along with the bootstrap).

Carl