3.4rc2 and pip on windows

[Zachary Ware]

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> FTR I raised this as http://bugs.python.org/issue20846 and it was closed 11
> minutes after I raised it.  I won't say anything else as I'm extremely tired
> and irritable and might well regret it later.

Best I can tell, the issue was closed correctly.  It doesn't look like
a Python or Pip bug, it looks like a bug in pyttsx's packaging.  Based
on empirical data [1], Pip does properly take care of running 2to3,
but *only when told to do so*.  Pip can't decide whether it should run
2to3 when it hasn't been told either way, because it's not safe.  It
can't try compiling .py files and running 2to3 if it gets
SyntaxErrors, because what if the SyntaxError is just a SyntaxError,
and not a ThisHasntBeenPortedToPython3Error?  Then 2to3 might blow up,
possibly leaving things in a state that makes the underlying issue
very hard to find.  It can't try importing the installed package,
because what if importing without specific external state in place has
ugly side-effects?  Pip can't safely do anything it's not told to do
with the packages it installs because then responsibility for the fire
in your hard drive could be laid at Pip's feet, not the evil evil
package author who wrote the code that started the fire.

It could be argued that Pip could compile any .py files that it
installs and just start screaming if it gets any SyntaxError, but what
if your package (for some weird reason) relies on .py file with bad
syntax?

I don't think Python itself is involved at all here, and I think Pip
is doing the right thing.  Everything installed successfully into the
right place (since `import pyttsx` did find the package); the fact
that it SyntaxError'd out is on the package author.

My 0.02USD, anyway.

-- 
Zach

[1] `pip install sphinx` from a 3.4 venv