pip/pip3 confusion and keeping up to date

[Mats Wichmann]

On 11/2/23 04:58, Chris Green via Python-list wrote:
> I have a couple of systems which used to have python2 as well as
> python3 but as Ubuntu and Debian verions have moved on they have
> finally eliminated all dependencies on python2.
> 
> So they now have only python3 and there is no python executable in
> PATH.

FWIW, for this you install the little stub package python-is-python3. 
Especially if you want to keep a python2 installation around - "python" 
will still be python3 in this case.

> So, going on from this, how do I do the equivalent of "apt update; apt
> upgrade" for my globally installed pip packages

Odds are you don't want to. The internet is full of surprises about 
dependency problems when stuff is blindly updated; the set of Python 
packages in the apt repositories is carefully curated to avoid these 
problems - and this is part of the reason why sometimes certain such 
packages are irritatingly down-rev.