I saw this Twitter thread the other day (https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/1617704787235176449?s=46...) about similar problems, and some comments suggest using Docker. I couldn’t find any guides or ways to do this for a Python project; anyone here know more or has done this before?
One does not simply 'pip install'
41–50 of 118 posts
Re: One does not simply 'pip install'
#42> There’s no shortage of package management alternatives available for Python [...] > How someone is meant to pick between these as a new developer is a mystery. This. Every time I get booked to look at some Python project hours are usually wasted initially figuring out what dependency mgmt solution was used how. And with what 'special sauce' the resp. developers deemed to be 'the right way' (or some library required…
I outright look for alternatives for something when the search comes with something written in python; the well-accepted strategy for deploying Python seems to be "abandon all hope of deploying it yourself in a way where updating is easy and hope docker container someone did that dealt with this mess will be enough.
I appreciate the tools that release a self-contained executable using something like PyInstaller. I don't have to worry about dependency issues and it runs without needing a whole Docker container.
Re: One does not simply 'pip install'
#43The next Debian/Ubuntu releases will no longer allow `pip install` outside of a venv: https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-668-marking-python-base-env... You can still force it via `pip install --break-system-packages ...` if needed.
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Re: One does not simply 'pip install'
#44> There’s no shortage of package management alternatives available for Python [...] > How someone is meant to pick between these as a new developer is a mystery. This. Every time I get booked to look at some Python project hours are usually wasted initially figuring out what dependency mgmt solution was used how. And with what 'special sauce' the resp. developers deemed to be 'the right way' (or some library required…
I outright look for alternatives for something when the search comes with something written in python; the well-accepted strategy for deploying Python seems to be "abandon all hope of deploying it yourself in a way where updating is easy and hope docker container someone did that dealt with this mess will be enough.
Huh? What stack? Python and Ruby take the same (I think better) approach of being written web server agnostic which requires you do some packaging work with your preferred wsgi/asgi server but after that it’s like everything else. In your container, copy all your shit over, install deps, pass envs to talk to external services like postgres/redis, run migrations, run server. Updates are just build the container again with the new version and run it.
I’m too lazy for that so in my own stuff I embed the web server in the project itself and start it programmatically (same with the migrations) so there’s less setup.
If the issue is the Docker container then that’s not really much to do with Python but that pretty much all software is written with that deployment strategy in mind. Those single file no libc statically compiled binaries are that way to run on a from scratch container.
Re: One does not simply 'pip install'
#45> There’s no shortage of package management alternatives available for Python [...] > How someone is meant to pick between these as a new developer is a mystery. This. Every time I get booked to look at some Python project hours are usually wasted initially figuring out what dependency mgmt solution was used how. And with what 'special sauce' the resp. developers deemed to be 'the right way' (or some library required…
To me there’s no mystery. Just use pip and then when you hit a specific problem see if any existing tools solve it. The game of, “blank project immediately needs 12 different tools I read about on a blog post” is silly.
The official python packaging documentation basically says, "here are 12 different tools that can do it, figure it out!" https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/tutorials/managing-de...
Re: One does not simply 'pip install'
#46Also, it's 2023 - please do not suggest approaches that do not use package hash based pinning. For example, use pip-tools.
Hopefully, in 2024, we will be able to say same thing about signing via sigstore ecosystem.
Re: One does not simply 'pip install'
#47Omg this is so true! I installed a package globally, but then my interpreter was using another version of python, which doesn't have the installed package. It took me an hour to find out about this. What a waste of time.
python -m pip install
then the 'pip' is running the same version as the 'python' command (I believe, can you check and comment latter?)
(you'd still have to check your IDE if you are not running python from the CLI)
Re: One does not simply 'pip install'
#48Not to mention dependencies that compile C modules so you also need a compiler, headers etc
You probably want conda if you're in this situation, as it basically solves for these issues (but doesn't have great docs for actually adding packages to it, unfortunately).
Re: One does not simply 'pip install'
#49npm certainly has a number of problems (at the end the article compares pip to npm) -- but after reading this article I didn't realize pip was so problematic. I also didn't realize it installed things globally. So the solution is?
I don't understand why pip doesn't do it like npm. Admittedly, I don't write Python code much, but "npm install xyz@1.2.3" simply installs to a node_modules/ folder in the current directory. Very easy to parse and nuke if I need to. I don't really understand how venv and its weird shell prompt are a better solution.
Re: One does not simply 'pip install'
#50> There’s no shortage of package management alternatives available for Python [...] > How someone is meant to pick between these as a new developer is a mystery. This. Every time I get booked to look at some Python project hours are usually wasted initially figuring out what dependency mgmt solution was used how. And with what 'special sauce' the resp. developers deemed to be 'the right way' (or some library required…
python3 includes "venv". If you don't have an existing preference, use that.
python3 -m venv ../my-venv-dir # wherever you like
. ../my-venv-dir/bin/activate
pip install whatever