[Distutils] The future of invoking pip

[Nick Coghlan]

On 13 November 2015 at 03:08, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2015 at 04:06 Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 11 November 2015 at 06:35, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Windows Python 2 installations require manual PATH modifications
>> > regardless, but it's more common for people to know how to make
>> > "python -m pip install X" work, than it is for them to remember to
>> > also add the "Scripts" directory needed to make "pip install X" work.
>>
>> ... and "py -m pip install X" works without any PATH modification on
>> all Windows systems with the launcher installed (I can't recall if
>> it's included with Python 2.7 - but if not, maybe it should be
>> backported? There's a standalone version people can get as well).
>
>
> While the discussion to try and get UNIX to adopt `py`  is nice, I think
> that decision falls under python-dev's jurisdiction. So if people here
> decide "we should be pushing for that" then that's great, but that means
> someone needs to go to python-dev and say "distutils-sig is trying to solve
> the issue of `pip` being ambiguous as to what Python installation it works
> with and we thought making `py` a thing on UNIX was the best solution
> forward for `py -m pip`". And if that's the case then the stop-gap is
> `python -m pip`.

That particular discussion would (and did) start on the new linux-sig list :)

To be honest, it didn't gain much traction, but converting
/usr/bin/python to a launcher seems to be a relatively plausible way
of helping to address the 2->3 transition problem (although the
semantics would differ significantly from those of the Windows "py"
launcher).

That would leave "py" continuing to exist indefinitely as a tool
primarily for handling Windows file associations by bringing shebang
line parsing to Windows rather than for direct invocation of the
Python interpreter.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia