Meh, what else is it supposed to do, delete sources all the time? Then people with slow connections will complain.
Also size-wise that’s actually not even much (though they could take the care to compress it), what actually takes up space with rust is compile artifacts, per workspace. Have you heard of kondo?
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.
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.
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
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.
Getting into rust is still on my to-do list, otherwise I’ve no major problem with pip or npm. They both have their flaws, but both work well enough to do what I need them for. If I had to prefer one it would be pip simply to sustain my passionate hate for all things JavaScript.
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.txt it installs the exact versions specified by the package maintainer, just like npm install the only difference is python requires you to specify the “lock file” instead of implicitly reading one from the CWD
As 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 the requirements.txt that you installed from.
But running those pip commands you mentioned is only going to affect what version gets installed initially.
I don’t follow. If my package-lock.json specifies package X v1.1 nothing stops me from manually telling npm to install package X v1.2, it will just update my package.json and package-lock.json afterwards
If a requirements.txt specifies X==1.1, pip will install v1.1, not 1.2 or a newer version. If I THEN install package Y that depends on X>1.1, the pip install output will say 1.1 is not compatible and that it is being upgraded to 1.2 to satisfy package Y’s requirements. If package Y works fine on v1.1 and does not require the upgrade, it will leave package X at the version you had previously installed.
Yep, exactly that. I remember some time ago the official python body (whatever it is) was recommending one tool for python version management and another one of virtual env management or something. Pretty much there were two competing tools and the official recommendation was to use one tool for X and the other tool for Y. It’s a complete mess.
If newer versions are released and dependencies change you would still install the old dependencies. And if the dependencies are not stored you can’t reproduce the exact same environment.
Well if the file would be created by hand, that’s very cumbersome.
But what is sometimes done to create it automatically is using
pip freeze > requirements. txt
inside your virtual environment.
You said I don’t need to create this file? How else will I distribute my environment so that it can be easily used? There are a lot of other standard, like setup.py etc, so it’s only one possibility. But the fact that there are multiple competing standard shows that how pip handles this is kinds bad.
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.
It probably works for your own local project. After using it for couple of days to install some 3rd party tool my conclusion is that it has no idea about dependencies. It just downloads some dependencies in some random versions and than it never works. Completely useless.
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 :)
The main issue with JS is that every 6 months someone comes up with the next great tool that misses half of basic features and dies after 6 months when someone comes up with the next great tool. But at least the old tested solution still works unlike in Python where the main goal seems to be breaking the backwards compatibility as often as possible.
But at least the old tested solution still works unlike in Python where the main goal seems to be breaking the backwards compatibility as often as possible.
lol what. Node does a new majorrelease every six months. And you’re shit talking python? There’s probably never going to be another major version change, and minor versions have several years of support
In like 10 years of python development I don’t think I’ve ever been mad about breaking changes in python.
Hmm, I personally haven’t seen that kind of issue myself though. I also tend to not use random packages from random authors though, so that might help.
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.
About the only good thing about npm is that I can use one of the superior alternatives. Using npm is almost always a headache as soon as you start working with a decent number of packages.
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 use npm ls if 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.
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…
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