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Comment by ducktective | Hacker News Reader

pyenv/pipx is a thing...

The binaries of Rust/Go replicas should also be updated but to my experience few package managers provide packages for apps written in those languages.

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So now you need Python + pipenv + the actual program? Versus just the binary with go/rust (or any compiled language for that matter)?

I think that's exactly the kind of complexity arusahni was referring to. Being able to deploy a single binary with `go get` or `cargo build` without worrying about anything else is really convenient.

I guess it depends on the use case though, I use Python extensively at work and have little complaints.

More like `pipx install httpie`. To update all python apps : `pipx upgrade-all`. For setting up pipx, you can use a pyenv managed python, like latest version, independent of whatever version is installed on system/distro. And you do this only one time. pipenv is for managing virtual envs not python itself.

`go get` and `cargo build` don't "deply" the binary but merely build it. It's `sudo make install` vs `apt update` all over again. Point is, from the complexity of app management POV, those language don't magically solve anything that python doesn't, not to mention the bigger size of the binaries built with Rust/Go.

I do choose rg/fd/fzf over python-equivalents all the time but I acknowledge that I have to manually keep track of installing/updating these programs.

Ripgrep and fzf have been part of official repos of pretty much all mainstream distros.

> I do choose rg/fd/fzf over python-equivalents all the time but I acknowledge that I have to manually keep track of installing/updating these programs.

No you don't. I'm not sure why you're spreading misinformation. And there is no viable Python equivalent to ripgrep anyway.

I meant, personally, for power utilities, I try to use statically-compiled tools rather than scripts...

What the spreading misinformation part about? :)

Because tools like ripgrep are in your Linux distros package repos. You don't need to update them manually.

Well I'm on Xubuntu 18.04 and none of them are available on official repos and I do manually fetch the binaries from their repos (thanks for your awesome work and for providing `deb`s for rg btw ;) ) but yeah my observation was based on empirical evidence on older distros...things seem to have changed...

https://repology.org/project/ripgrep/versions https://repology.org/project/fd-find/versions https://repology.org/project/fzf/versions

Still I find quite a lot of Rust apps that I like to use but there is not a distro package for them and the repos don't provide a binary or a deb or PPA. At least with Python repos, because of the nature of scripting vs compiled languages, I can simply isolate anything with a simple `pipx install app`

I don't know what pipx is, but `cargo install ripgrep` works.

"Versus just the binary" .. "with `go get` or `cargo build`"

Here's how I've installed `ht`:

   $ cargo install ht

Here's how I've installed httpie:

   $ pipx install httpie

If we assume the corresponding tools are already installed/configured (such as go/cargo), then what is this complexity you are speaking of?

Isn't `cargo install` similar to `make install`? Usually it is advised against handling binaries in system paths independent of distro package manager.

Also, sometimes there is no `make uninstall`. Does Rust enforce an uninstall routine in the manifest?

With pipx, every app is contained in its own venv automatically and does not interfere with distro-managed packages.

In the sense that it is not a replacement for a real packager manager, yes. It is both slightly more restrictive and also not; as the sibling says, it installs to a particular directory, and that means uninstalling is easy, however, there is an install hook, but no uninstall hook, so if that puts files somewhere, which in theory it can, they won’t be removed on uninstall. This also kinda sorta means people don’t do that in the install hook.

No, cargo install installs to $HOME/.cargo/bin

And this is why I refuse to install any Python CLI and just look for an alternative instead.

Who wants to deal with pyenv or whatever when you can just get a static binary?

IIRC I'd need both pipx and pyenv, because pipx alone will use whatever Python distribution is in my path.

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