[Python-Dev] updating ensurepip to include wheel

[Donald Stufft]

> On Aug 6, 2015, at 5:04 AM, Robert Collins <robertc at robertcollins.net> wrote:
> 
> Yes: but the logic chain from 'its a bad idea' to 'we don't include
> wheel but we do include setuptools' is the bit I'm having a hard time
> with.


In my opinion, it’s the severity of how crippled their experience is without that particular thing installed.

In the case of wheel not being installed they lose the ability to have an implicit wheel cache and to run ``pip wheel``. This makes pip less good but, unless they are running ``pip wheel`` everything is still fully functioning.

In the case of setuptools they lose the ability to ``pip install`` when there isn’t a wheel available and the ability to run ``pip wheel``. This is making pip completely unusable for a lot of people, and if we did not pre-install setup tools the number one thing people would do is to ``pip install setuptools``, most likely while bitching under their breath about the command that just failed because they tried to install from sdist.

So it’s really just “how bad are we going to break people’s expectations”.