Sorry Python but it is what it is.
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If this is from the perspective of a hobbyist or brand new Python dev, that’s a fair opinion to have, I suppose.
That said, if you’re using Python in a professional capacity, you really need to learn how to use the toolchain properly.
Python packaging and virtual environments are not difficult to understand, and I’d wager based on your comments elsewhere in this thread that your frustrations are born from not taking the time to understand why following the instructions from a fourteen-year-old blog post aren’t working.
99.99% of the time, the fault isn’t with pip, it’s with the maintainer of the broken package you’re trying to use.
This article someone linked is not 14 years old and it perfectly describes the mess python and pip are: https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2023/01/15/how-to-improve-python-packaging/
My favorite part is:
Most importantly: which tool should a beginner use? The PyPA has a few guides and tutorials, one is using pip + venv, another is using pipenv (why would you still do that?), and another tutorial that lets you pick between Hatchling (hatch’s build backend), setuptools, Flit, and PDM, without explaining the differences between them
But yes, following old blog post is the issue.
If you’re using a manually managed venv, you need to remember to activate it, or to use the appropriate Python.
That really doesn’t seem like a big ask.
I’ve been using python professionally for like 10 years and package management hasn’t really been a big problem.
If you’re doing professional work, you should probably be using docker or something anyway. Working on the host machine is just asking for “it works on my machine what do you mean it doesn’t work in production?” issues.
No, actually most devs don’t use docker like that. Not java devs, not JS devs, not rust devs. That is because maven, npm and cargo manage dependencies per project. You use it for python exactly because pip does it the wrong way and python has big compatibility issues.
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So you are saying that npm is better than pip?? I’m not saying pip is good, but npm?
npm has a lockfile which makes it infinitely better.
pip also has lock files
pip freeze > requirements.txtWould that just create a list of the current packages/versions without actually locking anything?
Would that just create a list of the current packages/versions
Yes, and all downstream dependencies
without actually locking anything?
What do you mean? Nothing stops someone from manually installing an npm package that differs from package-lock.json - this behaves the same. If you
pip install -r requirements.txtit installs the exact versions specified by the package maintainer, just likenpm installthe only difference is python requires you to specify the “lock file” instead of implicitly reading one from the CWDAs I understand, when you update npm packages, if a package/version is specified in
package-lock.json, it will not get updated past that version. But running those pip commands you mentioned is only going to affect what version gets installed initially. From what I can tell, nothing about those commands is stopping pip from eventually updating a package past what you had specified in therequirements.txtthat you installed from.
That’s not a lockfile. This would be the equivalent of package.json
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That’s not a controversial opinion. I’d say it’s worse than pip. At least pip doesn’t put nag messages on the console or fill up your hard drive with half a gigabyte of small files. OP is confused.
npm is so good there are at least 3 alternatives and every package instructs on using a different one.
In my experience npm is not great but it does work most of the time. I just tried installing bunch of stuff using pip and NONE of them worked. Python is backwards compatibility hell. Python 2 vs 3, dependencies missing, important libraries being forked and not working anymore. If the official installation instructions are ‘pip install X’ and it doesn’t work then what’s the point?
npm has A LOT of issues but generally when I do ‘npm i’ i installs things and they work.
But the main point is that cargo is just amazing :)
P.S. Never used ruby.
Sorry but nah. My last job we had a couple different python microservices. There was pipenv, venv, virtualenv, poetry, Pipfile.lock, requirements.txt (which is only the top level???), just pure madness
Apparently all this shit is needed because python wants to install shit globally by default? Are you kidding?
Well, we also had a couple node microservices. Here’s how it went: npm install. Done.
Afraid you fucked something and want a clean environment? Here’s how you do it with node: delete
node_modules/. Done.Want a clean python env? Uhhhhhhhh use docker I guess? Maybe try reinstalling Python using homebrew? (real actual answers from the python devs who set these up)
Well what’s currently installed?
ls node_modules, or usenpm lsif you want to be fancy.In python land? Uhhhhhh
Let’s update some dep–WHY AREN’T PYTHON PACKAGES USING SEMVER
So yeah, npm may do some stuff wrong, but it seems like it does way more shit right. Granted I didn’t really put in the effort to figure out all this python shit, but the people who did still didn’t have good answers. And npm is just straightforward and “works”.
“But JS projects pull in SOOOO many dependencies” Oh boohoo, you have a 1TB SSD anyway.
Apparently all this shit is needed because python wants to install shit globally by default?
None of that was needed. It was just used because nobody at your company enforced a single standard for developing your product.
Afraid you fucked something and want a clean environment? Here’s how you do it with node: delete node_modules/. Done.
rm -rf venv/. Done.
Want a clean python env? Uhhhhhhhh use docker I guess?
python -m venv venv
Well what’s currently installed? ls node_modules, or use npm ls if you want to be fancy. In python land? Uhhhhhh
pip freeze. pip list if you want it formatted.
Let’s update some dep–WHY AREN’T PYTHON PACKAGES USING SEMVER
Janky, legacy python packages will have random versioning schemes. If a dependency you’re using doesn’t follow semver I would question why you’re using it and seek out an actively maintained alternative.
Im honestly surprised someone using Python professionally appears to not know anything about how pip/venv work.
The points you think you are making here are just very clearly showing that you need to rtfm…
More like rtfms. I really didn’t feel like learning 20 different tools for repos my team didn’t touch very often.
I really don’t see the hassle… just pick one (e.g. pip/venv) and learn it in like half a day. It took college student me literally a couple hours to figure out how I could distribute a package to my peers that included compiled C++ code using pypi. The hardest part was figuring out how to cross compile the C++ lib. If you think it’s that hard to understand I really don’t know what to tell you…
Sure, for a new project. But when inheriting code I’m not in a position to pick.
The point is that the state of python package managers is a hot fucking mess compared to npm. Claiming that “npm is just as bad” (or worse) honestly seems ridiculous to me.
(And isn’t pip/venv the one the
requirements.txtone? Completely flat, no way to discern the difference between direct dependencies and sub-dependencies? No hashes? Sucks when it’s time for updating? Yeah no thanks, I’d like a proper lock file. Which is probably why there are a dozen other tools.)
Memes like this make me ever more confused about my own software work flow. I’m in engineering so you can already guess my coding classes were pretty surface level at least at my uni and CC
Conda is what I like to use for data science but I still barely understand how to maintain a package manager. Im lowkey a bot when it comes to using non-GUI programs and tbh that paradigm shift has been hard after 18 years of no CLI usage.
The memes are pretty educational though
I don’t know what cargo is, but npm is the second worst package manager I’ve ever used after nuget.
I’ve never had an issue with nuget, at least since dotnet core. My experience has it far ahead of npm and pip
cargo is the package manager for the Rust language
Bruh idk why the difference… Educate me?
cargo just works, it’s great and everyone loves it.
npm has a lot of issues but in general does the job. When docs say do ‘npm install X’ you do it and it works.
pip is a mess. In my experience doing ‘pip install X’ will maybe install something but it will not work because some dependencies will be screwed up. Using it to distribute software is pointless.
I use pip extensively and have zero issues.
npm pulls in a million dependencies for even the simplest functionality.
What’s so bad about pip? Imho, the venv thing is really nice
vevn is not pip. The confusing set of different tools is part of the problem.
cough npm,yarn,grunt,esbuild,webpack,parcel,rollup,lasso,rollup,etc.,etc.cough
I’m not saying that Python’s packaging ecosystem isn’t complicated, but to paint JavaScript as anything other than nightmare fuel just isn’t right.
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison, the only two libraries that are related to the actual packaging system in that list is yarn and NPM. The rest of them have to do with the complexities of actually having your code runnable in the maximum number of browsers without issue. If python was the browser scripting language, it’d likely have the same issue.
Is there a python package that transpiles and polyfills python3 to work in python 2? 2.7? 2.5?
Also, unrelated to your comment, a lot of people are dunking on npm for the black hole that is node modules (which is valid), but also saying it’s not pip’s fault a lot of packages don’t work. It’s not npm’s fault the package maintainers are including all these dependencies, and there are some 0-dependency packages out there.
