Why not just install the required version of Python, maybe from a 3rd party repo if not available in the main repos? Why would I ever want to get a compiler toolchain to get my Python interpreter?
It is a single `apt-get install` (which probably downloads less MBs than our typical `npm/yarn` install).
Consider that if pyenv came pre-packaged for ubuntu/debian, those packages would be runtime dependencies and then you would just need to `apt-get install pyenv`.
Real scenario I'm in right now:
- Need to build libraries to support 2.7, 3.6, plus future proofing for >=3.7
- CI workers have images which only python 2.7 and 3.6, platform team too busy to update them
- Mac Homebrew only supports >=3.7
There's no common environment between anything unless we use pyenv
I understand that virtualenv and maybe even pyenv are useful if you need different requirements for different projects using the same version of Python, as apparently pip installs packages globally. But for your setup, I don't get why something like pyenv really helps...
Yep, most people can just do this. Then, they want a little script over the top that downloads the different versions of Python for them -- just to make life easier for them. Wouldn't it be handy to also script the installation? It'd also probably be useful to automatically setup the version of Python I want to use when I switch folders, so I'm not constantly running the wrong version when I change projects.
... et voila, we've reinvented pyenv :).
But having c compiler toolchain available is pretty much standard practice when using python (or nodejs, ruby, etc) because you might need to install some library that requires compilation from source (e.g. psycopg2). If you don't want that, you'll stuck with installing those 3rd party libs from your distro's repo, which might be out of date or outright missing (especially for less popular packages).
That's the thing. pyenv just downloads the source code of the specified Python version, and then compiles it on your machine. They did that to be agnostic of the OS you're running on.