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

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Thu Sep 10 11:41:28 CEST 2015


Andrew Barnert writes:

 > No, that's not the problem. Lion came with 2.7.1, so you already
 > had it before upgrading it, and it's hard to imagine Apple
 > upgrading your system 2.7.1 to 2.7.6 or 2.7.10 broke anything. More
 > likely, Apple screwed up your PATH, or broke your MacPorts so you
 > had to reinstall or repair it?

I've had no problems with PATH, personally.

I'm just saying that learning that pip was actually version-specific,
and then getting the right pip for the current Python of interest, has
been an annoyance for me over the years, and I was very happy to
switch to "python -m pip" because it Just Works.

As far as the question of order of installation, I just wanted to
point out that system upgrades do sometimes catch up to the user,
resulting in duplicate installations, rather than the user following
some blog to the letter and installing a verson they don't need.

 > I'd assume most people on this list know what they're doing with
 > their PATH. If you don't, then you just got lucky for a few years.

For me, PATH is easy.  <python> -m pip is easy.  <pip> is hard. :-/

 > and if you didn't even realize you were running multiple Python 2.7
 > versions in parallel, that just means you never tried anything that
 > MacPorts didn't anticipate.

No, it just means that since forever my personal PATH has been set up
to give precedence to /usr/local/bin and /opt/local/bin, and since the
days of Python 2 I avoid the system Python at all costs.
Specifically, I never invoke Python without a full 2-digit version
number (except in venvs), and my shebangs specify it too (ditto).  (It
works out to the same semantics as "not surprising MacPorts", of
course.)


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