[Python-ideas] Things I wish Pip learned from Npm

[Philipp A.]

2014-05-07 22:48 GMT+02:00 M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com>:

Please note that you should probably post this to the pip mailing
> list and/or the distutils list.
>
> python-ideas is about ideas for Python itself and even though Python 3.4
> includes bootstrap code to install pip, pip itself is not developed by
> the Python Core Devs.
>
There’s one point that’s relevant and worth discussing here, I quote:

*pip’s choice of defaulting to a global installation is wrong*
>
Yes. Python’s pip bootstrapping is there in order to guarantee that all the
“ just type pip install foobar” tutorials work.

Linux distributions like Arch, Debian and Ubuntu
deliberately<https://lists.debian.org/debian-python/2014/03/msg00045.html>broke
this guarantee, and for good reasons:

Pip per default installs globally, which should be the system package
manager’s territory.

It would be best if pip would work like this if you run it without some -g,
--global switch outside a venv:

On Linux: “You’re on linux, please use your package manager for global
installation or use a virtual environment. Use the -g switch to force
global installation”

On Windows and OSX: “Please use the -g switch for installations outside of
virtual environments”
------------------------------

Is it to late to change this? I really *want* the guarantee and pip to
work. But I also totally understand why all those distributions break it!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/attachments/20140508/10838383/attachment.html>