[Python-ideas] Looking for input to help with the pip situation

[Stephan Houben]

Hi Michel,

That's exactly why I proposed a `pip` function available from the Python
prompt.
I suppose you could still tell your students to copy/paste the following
into their
Python interpreter.

def pip(args):
    import sys
    import subprocess
    subprocess.check_call([sys.executable, "-m", "pip"] + args.split())
    print("Please restart Python now to use installed or upgraded
packages.")

I suppose an alternative is to set up jupyterhub

https://jupyterhub.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

and let all your students just access that from a webbrowser.

Stephan


2017-11-06 7:47 GMT+01:00 Michel Desmoulin <desmoulinmichel at gmail.com>:

> Hello,
>
> Today I'm going to give a training in Python again.
>
> And again it will go the same way.
>
> On Mac I will have to make people install python, then tell them to use
> pip3.
>
> On Windows, I will have to warn them about checking the "add python
> executable to system path" (that one of them will ALWAYS miss anyway).
> Then tell them to use py -3.x -m pip because some of them will have
> several versions of Python installed.
>
> Then on linux, I will tell them to install python-pip and python-venv
> and use python3 -m pip.
>
> I'll talk about --user, but commands won't be usable on some machine
> where the Scripts or bin dir is not in the system path.
>
> Then I will make them create a virtualenv so that they can avoid messing
> with their system python and finally can just use "pip install" like in
> most tutorials on the Web.
>
> And eventually I'll talk about pipenv and conda. The first one so they
> don't have to think about activating the virtualenv everytime, or pip
> freeze, or create the venv, or add it to gitignore, etc. The second
> because anaconda is very popular on windows.
>
> There is no way a beginner is going to get any that by themselves
> without a lot of time and pain. They will read some tutorial on the web
> and struggle to make sens of what pip is and why "pip install" doesn't
> work and why "python sucks".
>
> I think Python is offering an incredible experience for first timer.
> However, the whole "where is walpip" shenanigans is not one of them.
>
> I really want some people from this list to discuss here so we can find
> a way to either unify a bit the way we install and use pip, or find a
> way to express a tutorial that always works for people on the most
> popular platforms and spread the word so that any doc uses it.
>
> Michel
>
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