[Python-ideas] High time for a builtin function to manage packages (simply)?

[Andrew Barnert]

On Sep 9, 2015, at 14:25, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
> 
> On September 9, 2015 at 5:22:57 PM, Andrew Barnert via Python-ideas (python-ideas at python.org) wrote:
>>> Apple's Python doesn't come with pip
> 
> As of the latest Yosemite release, and in El Capitan, it *does* however come with Python 2.7.10 and thus ``python -m ensurepip`` works.

Sure, and all the way back to 10.5, you could just "easy_install pip". That never solved the problem of people who've been told to install a second Python 2.7 without any explanation of why or any consideration of what problems that might lead to; in fact, it just means they're even more likely to end up installing two colliding pips.

I don't think there's much chance that anything Apple or the Python community does will get people to stop writing blog posts/class notes/installation web pages/SO answers/etc. to do this. There is a chance that proselytizing for virtualenv and/or Python 3 will make the problem irrelevant (and it already seems to be having that effect, just not as fast as would be ideal).

Of course there will still be some people who really do need two Python 2.7 installations and aren't expert enough to manage it, and some people who manage to make a mess of things even with separate 2 and 3 or with venvs or with only Apple's Python. But, based on my (admittedly anecdotal) experience and my educated-guess-but-still-a-guess, I think it'll become not much more common than the equivalent problems for Fedora or Ubuntu or FreeBSD, which is a huge improvement.