[Distutils] Pip 10.0 has been released

[Paul Moore]

On behalf of the PyPA, I am pleased to announce that pip 10.0 has just
been released. This release has been the culmination of many months of
work by the community.

To install pip 10.0, you can run

    python -m pip install --upgrade pip

or use get-pip, as described in
https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/installing. If you are using a version
of pip supplied by your distribution vendor, vendor-supplied upgrades
will be available in due course (or you can use pip 10 in a virtual
environment).

(One minor issue with using get-pip on Windows - when you download
get-pip.py, rename it to something that doesn't include "pip" in the
name, such as "gp.py", as the standard name triggers a check in pip
that aborts the run - this is being tracked in
https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/5219).

Highlights of the new release:

* Python 2.6 is no longer supported - if you need pip on Python 2.6,
you should stay on pip 9, which is the last version to support Python
2.6.
* Support for PEP 518, which allows projects to specify what packages
they require in order to build from source. (PEP 518 support is
currently limited, with full support coming in future versions - see
the documentation for details).
* Significant improvements in Unicode handling for non-ASCII locales on Windows.
* A new "pip config" command.
* The default upgrade strategy has become "only-if-needed"
* Many bug fixes and minor improvements.

In addition, the previously announced reorganisation of pip's
internals has now taken place. Unless you are the author of code that
imports the pip module (or a user of such code), this change will not
affect you. If you are affected, please report the issue to the author of the
offending code (refer them to
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2017-October/031642.html
for the details of the announcement).

Thanks to everyone who put so much effort into the new release. Many
of the contributions came from community members, whether in the form
of code, participation in design discussions, or bug reports. The pip
development team is extremely grateful to everyone in the community
for their contributions.

Thanks,
Paul