[Distutils] The future of invoking pip

[James Bennett]

On Sunday, November 8, 2015, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>
> +1. Addressing this by insisting on ‘python -m foo’ is not a solution.
> It's a plaster over a problem that will remain until the underlying
> conflict is resolved.
>
> That's not to say PyPA should ignore the issue, certainly there are
> things that can be done to help. But ‘python -m foo’ is an ugly wart,
> and I really want the rhetoric to acknowledge that instead of
> considering it a satisfactory end point.
>

I agree with this, and with the feeling that we're just kicking the failure
down the line: if someone doesn't know what Python is being invoked by
'pip', they likely will have the same problem with other tools, too, and
ultimately the ability to run Python scripts directly and without having to
do hackery with supporting/requiring 'python -m' or similar is too useful
and commonly used. So faced with either (essentially) forcing a trend of
every command-line tool having to be invoked with 'python -m', or requiring
people with complex multi-Python installations to be more careful, I choose
the "be more careful" option (i.e., I would strenuously resist changing
Django's admin script to "python -m django" if this were proposed to Django
today).
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