[Distutils] PEP 376, the INSTALLER file, and system packages

[Jeremy Stanley]

On 2016-01-23 08:09:47 +1300 (+1300), Robert Collins wrote:
[...]
> Having a interface to the system package manager as has been
> previously mooted - and I'm going to get back to that - might help a
> little, but uninstalls are quite different to installs. Uninstalls get
> blocked by things like 'app-foo requires requests', and I would be
> super suprised (and delighted!) if we were able to override that when
> upgrading requests via pip :)

Add to this the fact that whatever system-distributed files pip
removes/replaces will get quietly overwritten again the next time
you update your system packages and there's a new version of
whatever you've replaced... perhaps being able to set a hold state
through the distro package manager from pip at that point for
whatever package owned the files it replaced would be a helpful
middle ground (I know how I'd go about it on Debian derivatives,
less so on all those "other" distros).
-- 
Jeremy Stanley