[Distutils] [final version?] PEP 513 - A Platform Tag for Portable Linux Built Distributions

[Petr Viktorin]

On 02/16/2016 03:20 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
> On 16 February 2016 at 14:14, Wayne Werner <waynejwerner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I've learned that *usually* linux distro repos lag way behind in updating
>> their Python packages, so unless I *can't* install the package via pip,
>> that's what I do.
> 
> Yeah, and that's what I'd count as an issue between you and your
> distro. If they don't provide sufficiently up to date versions for
> you, and you choose to deal with that in whatever way you prefer,
> that's fine by me.

As a fedora packager, I'd definitely prefer if you used "pip install
--user" instead if "sudo pip install".

> I don't see why the Python community shouldn't provide a solution that
> you can use in such a situation, simply because it's not the solution
> your distro would prefer you to use.

So, what is the argument against "pip install --user"? Does that not
leave everyone happy?

Of course it's your system and you're free to do whatever you want, and
I'm sure you can debug any resulting issues successfully.
But there's a bunch of people spending time to get all kinds of packages
working well together for everyone (even people who don't care about
latest versions of Python packages), and recommending "sudo pip" is
making that job harder.

>> Of course, to my knowledge I've never replaced a system installed version
>> of anything. Though, considering I've been using Python3 since it was available
>> and most distros use Python 2, that may not really be saying much :)
> 
> I thought the distro "hands off" rules applied even to adding things
> to system-managed directories, not just to overwriting files?

Definitely. You can't know what the distro will add in the future; some
unrelated package might bring in a (possibly newly packaged) dependency
that replaces whatever you installed.

> Anyway, I've already made more inflammatory comments than an outsider
> should, so I'll leave the debate to the Unix users at this point.