[Python-Dev] Proposing the deprecation of the pyvenv script (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Sat Sep 19 07:24:16 CEST 2015

Barry Warsaw writes:

One thing that came up in a similar discussion is pip, and the suggested move to python -m pip, which makes a lot of sense. However, inside a virtualenv, there's no ambiguity about the Python version associated with direct pip invocation, so it still makes sense to install that there.

And then the poor newbie who's just following orders (eg, in mailman3/src/mailman/docs/INSTALL) will try pip'ing outside of the virtualenv for some reason, and have a WTF experience. I think we should KISS the pip command good-bye.

A somewhat different way I look at it: the OS provides a shell, and you invoke aptitude (CLI) or synaptic (from clickety-clickety GUI shell) from that OS shell to manage OS packages. By analogy (always slippery but this one feels good to me), to manage python packages you should be working in the Python "shell". R does it that way with great success. Emacsen do it (with lesser success :-P ). perl and TeX don't -- but they don't have interactive shells (at least not universally available to the users).

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list