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Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

Python's package management makes a mockery of the famous Zen of Python: "There should be one--and preferably only one--obvious way to do it."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_of_Python

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There are two reasons I am not in favor of python. First and foremost its packaging sucks.

I have wasted far too much time wrangling pythons packaging systems. Incompatibilities between pip, setuputils, distutils, virtualenv, eggs, C modules, and wheels I have literally given up. I love and use python but I no longer package it and deploy it for others to consume. Try to package a protobuf3/grpc system these days into a .deb, its a nightmare. Even the grpcio devs use docker containers to build packages because python has such a nightmare of a system.

I'll leave the second reason out for the sake of context

Do you think that's easier, harder, or about the same as Make, Maven, Rake, etc.?

Ruby has one packaging format that is essentially unchanged since 2004: RubyGems. There have been improvements in making it easier to convert a gem to a native package since then (even though I think that’s a fool’s errand), but the fundamental packaging system hasn’t changed (although indexing and serving has).

I'm not a Rubyist, but in my experience there are few Ruby packages with non-Ruby dependencies. That makes packaging much easier.

No it's not. Putting your head in a sand for the last 5 years sucks.

Please don't be so dishonest to claim that "because pip" fixed Python packaging.

Bad example IMHO as grpc building is painful even with 0 involvement of Python. That is, If you have any prerequirements either for build environment or 3rd party libraries. And while I did get things done in reasonable time, while doing research I noticed quite a lot of people where echoing about same thing.

Don't leave is hanging. What's the second reason? Thanks.

As someone who mainly works with other programming languages, I feel like the "obvious way to do it" was always the way Pipenv and its Pipfiles handle things, and it finally arrived.

It's not the first time I say this, but I think it's crazy how long some package ecosystems live without a "sane" package manager, and how recently those even appeared.

You mean the tool that has a 2/3 flag option, but no way to choose precisely which from 3.4, 3.5 or 3.6 you want ?

    pipenv --python python34

pipenv --python python34 Error: no such option: --python

Is that recent ?

Maybe, the project as a whole seems to be under a year old and is under very active development.

Probably 7.0.0 or 3.2.9, where current version is 8.2.6: https://github.com/kennethreitz/pipenv/blob/master/HISTORY.t...

Also, I guess --python 3.4 would be the preferred way to do it, seems to work with either versions or executables.

I think this is a fairly recent add —

https://docs.pipenv.org/basics.html#specifying-versions-of-p...

Sweet. Then I take it back, I'm glad Kenneth finally listened to reason. Cause he sure politely told me to fuck off the first time I asked for it.

Haha. I tried to dig up a change note for it but couldn’t find one quickly on mobile. I think at least it only hit the Debian stable repos within the past month or two.

Pipenv is definitely a game changer. Soon enough the Anaconda distribution wouldn't be necessary to get the SciPy stack installed on Windows[1], pipenv would just work™. This would enable sharing of Jupyter Notebooks backed by deterministic environments that work even on Windows, which is awesome :) [1] -- http://abhirag.in/articles/pipenv_win.html

There is one -- and preferably only one -- obvious way to do it[1]. The trouble is that it's steeped in 1990s assumptions about system administration, user knowledge, and deployment environments.

[1]: You put the third party code in /usr/local/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages.

No, the trouble is that it's wrong.

We knew[1] it was wrong in the 1990s, but /usr/local is a "best practice", and these people who believe "best practices" are more important than solid engineering breed faster.

Camacho for president 2020.

[1]: http://cr.yp.to/slashpackage/studies.html

The Zen of Python just says that there is one and preferably only one obvious way to do it. It doesn't say anything about whether that way is right or wrong.

I always thought that was supposed to be some kind of joke. :)

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