3 ms·

This is good advice, but it elucidates the problem. There should be 2 steps (1. list your dependencies, 2. pip install). Not 5.

geofft 7y ago
I agree. I'm optimistic about tools like Poetry https://poetry.eustace.io/docs/basic-usage/ https://poetry.eustace.io/docs/basic-usage/ for solving this. Unfortunately Python predates the realization that good packaging tools were a thing that needs to be solved in the core language and not externally (Go, Rust, Node, etc. postdate this realization; C, Perl, Java, etc. also predate it). The flip side is that decoupling the interpreter/compiler from the build system makes it more possible to write tools like Poetry (and, indeed, virtualenv) that explore new approaches to the problem. At my day job where we do hermetic in-house builds with no internet access and (ideally) everything built from checked-in sources, building C and Java and Python is straightforward, because we can just tell them to use our source tree for dependency discovery and nothing else, and we can set up CFLAGS / CLASSPATH / PYTHONPATH / etc. as needed. Building Go and Rust and Node is much more challenging, because idiomatic use of those languages requires using their build tools, which often want to do things like copy all their dependencies to a subdirectory or grab resources from the internet. Of course, given that it's Python, there should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it....
- Groxx 7y ago
  >Unfortunately Python predates the realization that good packaging tools were a thing that needs to be solved in the core language and not externally (Go, Rust, Node, etc. postdate this realization; C, Perl, Java, etc. also predate it). Sure, but it's also a cultural thing. Ruby is nearly as old, and also predates this, but has nowhere near the insanity of Python. The community jumped on bundler and rvm/rbenv/etc super quickly, and rapidly improved them, while the Python community is barely even aware of pip-tools / pipenv AFAICT. Even virtualenv is really only a "real pythoners know" thing, it's rarely mentioned in guides, so newbies screw up their global environment frequently.
  - TomK32 7y ago
    Ruby was exotic until someone translated the docs to English, but the whole ecosystem is indeed one reason I love Ruby. I really don't understand why python 2.7 is still a thing 11 years later. Sure, legacy systems, but if I install recently active open source on my machine I wouldn't expect it to use an outdated version of a programming language. Upgrading can't be that hard.
    - afarrell 7y ago
      python 2.7 is still a thing because it was announced as the LTS* release over a decade ago. * nobody called it that, but thats effectively what it meant to say “there will be no python 2.8. Python 2.7 will be supported until T. Python 3.x will be superceded in a year.”

geofft 7y ago

I agree. I'm optimistic about tools like Poetry https://poetry.eustace.io/docs/basic-usage/ https://poetry.eustace.io/docs/basic-usage/ for solving this. Unfortunately Python predates the realization that good packaging tools were a thing that needs to be solved in the core language and not externally (Go, Rust, Node, etc. postdate this realization; C, Perl, Java, etc. also predate it). The flip side is that decoupling the interpreter/compiler from the build system makes it more possible to write tools like Poetry (and, indeed, virtualenv) that explore new approaches to the problem. At my day job where we do hermetic in-house builds with no internet access and (ideally) everything built from checked-in sources, building C and Java and Python is straightforward, because we can just tell them to use our source tree for dependency discovery and nothing else, and we can set up CFLAGS / CLASSPATH / PYTHONPATH / etc. as needed. Building Go and Rust and Node is much more challenging, because idiomatic use of those languages requires using their build tools, which often want to do things like copy all their dependencies to a subdirectory or grab resources from the internet. Of course, given that it's Python, there should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it....

Groxx 7y ago
>Unfortunately Python predates the realization that good packaging tools were a thing that needs to be solved in the core language and not externally (Go, Rust, Node, etc. postdate this realization; C, Perl, Java, etc. also predate it). Sure, but it's also a cultural thing. Ruby is nearly as old, and also predates this, but has nowhere near the insanity of Python. The community jumped on bundler and rvm/rbenv/etc super quickly, and rapidly improved them, while the Python community is barely even aware of pip-tools / pipenv AFAICT. Even virtualenv is really only a "real pythoners know" thing, it's rarely mentioned in guides, so newbies screw up their global environment frequently.
- TomK32 7y ago
  Ruby was exotic until someone translated the docs to English, but the whole ecosystem is indeed one reason I love Ruby. I really don't understand why python 2.7 is still a thing 11 years later. Sure, legacy systems, but if I install recently active open source on my machine I wouldn't expect it to use an outdated version of a programming language. Upgrading can't be that hard.
  - afarrell 7y ago
    python 2.7 is still a thing because it was announced as the LTS* release over a decade ago. * nobody called it that, but thats effectively what it meant to say “there will be no python 2.8. Python 2.7 will be supported until T. Python 3.x will be superceded in a year.”