[Distutils] Current status of PEP 439 (pip boostrapping)

[Nick Coghlan]

On 15 July 2013 19:30, Ronald Oussoren <ronaldoussoren at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On 13 Jul, 2013, at 7:31, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 3. That means there are two main options available to us that I still consider viable alternatives (the installer bundling idea was suggested in one of the off list comments I mentioned):
>>
>> * an explicit bootstrapping script
>> * bundling a *full* copy of pip with the Python installers for Windows and Mac OS X, but installing it to site-packages rather than to the standard library directory. That way pip can be used to upgrade itself as normal, rather than making it part of the standard library per se. This is then closer to the "bundled application" model adopted for IDLE in PEP 434 (we could, in fact, move to distributing idle the same way).
>
> Or automaticly invoke the bootstrap script during installation (for the Python installers), that we the installers don't end up with a stale version of pip.

Yeah, I see pros and cons to either approach, with the main con of
install time bootstrapping being the requirement for network access,
while the main con of bundling is that you may end up needing to do
"pip install --upgrade pip" immediately after installing Python
anyway. I currently have a slight preference for actual bundling, but
could probably be persuaded to endorse an install time bootstrap
instead. It's only the bootstrap-on-first-use approach that I've
decided is asking for trouble.

I don't believe either Martin (von Löwis) or Brian (Curtin) is on this
list, so I'll email them directly to see if they have a preference.

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia