[Python-Dev] PEP 453 Round 4 - Explicit bootstrapping of pip in Python installations

[Paul Tagliamonte]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 09:27:24AM -0400, Donald Stufft wrote:
> Rationale
> =========
> 
> Currently, on systems without a platform package manager and repository,
> installing a third-party Python package into a freshly installed Python
> requires first identifying an appropriate package manager and then
> installing it.

Howdy Donald,

Thanks for helping make Python better.

However, speaking as a Debian-folk (but not for the Debian-folk, I'll
let barry take care of that), many users of Python software don't even
know what pip is (or even that Python exists) -- as such, I find it very
unlikely that a development tool would be shiped as part of the Python
distribution in Debian. I don't see this changing, even with this pep.
python-pip is still installable, but I don't see it pulled in by
default.


> Even on systems that *do* have a platform package manager, it is unlikely to
> include every package that is available on the Python Package Index, and

Yes. This is true. However, it's not Debian's job to include all of
pypi. Pypi allows anyone to upload, and we have quite a bit of attention
to concerns such as providing source for everything (less of a concern
for Python, but pickles can still contain data not in the prefered form
of modification), and proper free software licensing.

We also have a concern about stability; so we manage all the package set
together to allow non-technical end-users to install stuff and not worry
about breaking their system. It's not always the case where you can
upgrade a library without breaking API.


I'm trimming the rest, since I don't want to get dragged into
side-conversations about pip as a package manager.


Cheers,
  Paul


-- 
 .''`.  Paul Tagliamonte <paultag at debian.org>
: :'  : Proud Debian Developer
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