7/23/2026 at 9:19:39 PM
Some discussion on (ab?)using pypi to distribute binaries - https://discuss.python.org/t/use-of-pypi-as-a-generic-storag...by leontrolski
7/26/2026 at 12:40:43 PM
Wherever you fall on that debate (I have my opinions but they are not strongly held), a bigger red flag here for me is the `pip install ...` opener. The fact they later have a `uvx ...` example in the docs just makes defaulting to pip even worse.As that comment mentions:
> 5 years ago [...] Python packaging was a big mess.
> Today [...] I think Python's packaging story has never been stronger.
Poetry, & later Uv, are essential & invaluable milestones in that revolutionary story; Pip is terrible software & should be left in the past.
by lucideer
7/26/2026 at 2:32:05 PM
> Poetry, & later Uv, are essential & invaluable milestones in that revolutionary story; Pip is terrible software & should be left in the past.The comparison to other programs is missing the point of why pip is terrible. For that matter, last I checked Poetry relied on either vendored pip or something very much like it to do the actual package installation.
If you like workflows dictated by all-in-one tools, go for it. Don't force it on me. Some of us still see great value in the Unix philosophy.
The real problem is that pip doesn't even do a good job of its "one thing" (the actual package installation). It barely understands caching, has insecure and confusing default behaviours stemming from nigh-unfixable legacy issues, doesn't know how to inspect the installation environment properly (therefore relying on ugly hacks to install cross-environment at all), vendors a bunch of stuff it barely uses and often doesn't really need, and is overall horribly architected.
by zahlman
7/26/2026 at 6:16:10 PM
I get you on unix philosophy (I'm not into it myself but I respect those who want that) but uv, for all its extra features, does actually do that particular "one thing" a lot better than pip.You've summarised many of pip's internally problems well - there's also the lack of any attempt at proper manifest management. This is partially an ecosystem problem (pre-PEP518), but the tools inform the specs as much as the specs inform the tools.
I think there's also a reasonable argument to be made that uv only does one thing, & that the big problems in this space before was that python required using 3 tools to awkwardly collaborate to get one thing done. That one thing is dependency management: pip to pull them, venv to load them, pyenv to pull & load one of them (the interpreter).
by lucideer