[Distutils] deprecating pip install --target

Vinay Sajip vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk
Thu Feb 11 18:17:49 EST 2016


Robert Collins <robertc <at> robertcollins.net> writes:

> 
> This is fairly broken - it doesn't handle platlib vs purelib (see pip
> PR 3450), doesn't handle data files, or any other layout. Donald says
> pip uses it to maintain the _vendor subtrees only, which doesn't seem
> like a particularly strong use case.
> 
> Certainly the help description for it is misleading - since what we're
> actually doing is copying only a subset of what the package installed
> - so at a minimum we need to be much clearer about what it does.
> 
> But, I think it would be better to deprecate it and remove it... so
> I'm pinging here to see if anyone can explain a sensible use case for
> it in the context of pip :)

I use it in pretty much the same way as Paul mentioned - I wouldn't like it 
to go unless something equivalent is available. Updating the help / 
documentation for it to better reflect what it does would be uncontroversial 
for me, but I see no strong reason for deprecation and removal. As Paul 
suggests, it can get stricter about what it'll handle.

Regards,

Vinay Sajip



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