[Distutils] [Numpy-discussion] Proposal: stop supporting 'setup.py install'; start requiring 'pip install .' instead

[Paul Moore]

On 6 November 2015 at 07:39, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 12:37 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>>
>> If ``pip install —build … —no-clean …`` worked to do incremental builds,
>> would that satisfy this use case? (without the —upgrade and —no-deps,
>> —no-deps is only needed because —upgrade and —upgrade is needed because of
>> another ticket that I think will get fixed at some point).
>
>
> Then there's at least a way to do it, but it's all very unsatisfying. Users
> are again going to have a hard time finding this. And I'd hate to have to
> type that every time.
>
> Robert and Nathaniel have argued the main points already so I'm not going to
> try to go in more detail, but I think the main point is:
>
>   - we want to replace `python setup.py install` with `pip install .` in
> order to get proper uninstalls and dependency handling.
>   - except for those two things, `python setup.py install` does the expected
> thing while pip is trying to be way too clever which is unhelpful.

While I understand what you're trying to achieve (and I'm in favour,
in general) it should be remembered that pip's core goal is installing
packages - not being a component of a development workflow.

We absolutely need to make pip useful in the development workflow type
of situation (that's why pip install -e exists, after all). But I
don't think it's so much pip "trying to be too clever" as incremental
rebuilds wasn't the original use case that "pip install ." was
designed for. What we'll probably have to do is be *more* clever to
special case out the situations where a development-style support for
incremental rebuilds is more appropriate than the current behaviour.

Paul