Why is pip not mentioned in the Installation Documentation?

Mathew_Topper · November 16, 2012, 10:54am

Hi,

I'm interested to know why the pip package manager is not more

widely supported for installation of python packages like
matplotlib? Matplotlib seems to be particularly slowly updated in
the Fedora repositories, for example, so I often find that a source
installation is necessary. I know this isn’t especially difficult
for the experienced user, but surely using something like pip would
make this process for accessible for all users of python packages,
particularly those that do not receive much attention from the big
distribution maintainers? Yet, pip doesn’t get a mention on the
installation documentation of matplotlib or many other python packs.

I would love to hear anyone's thoughts on this matter.

Many Thanks,

Mat

···

–
Dr. Mathew Topper

  Institute for Energy Systems

  School of Engineering

  The University of Edinburgh

  Faraday Building

  The King’s Buildings

  Edinburgh EH9 3JL

  Tel: +44 (0)131 650 5570

  School fax: +44 (0)131 650 6554

  mathew.topper@...3926...

  [http://www.see.ed.ac.uk](http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/)

Michael_Droettboom1 · November 16, 2012, 1:59pm

One of the reasons (historically) is that the build scripts predate setuptools and ships copies of dependencies rather than using easy_install or pip to install them. There is an open PR to address this here:

github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib

Retool the setup.py infrastructure

matplotlib:master ← mdboom:setup_rework

opened 07:12PM - 06 Nov 12 UTC

mdboom

+2995 -27414

This is a complete reorganization of the `setup.py`/`setupext.py` infrastructure…, and is the implementation of MEP11. - setuptools is now used to integrate with pip/easy_install. - Third-party Python dependencies (dateutil, pytz, six and pyparsing) are now installed automatically using setuptools, rather than maintaining local copies. This seems to work quite well for me, but will need to be tested in a number of environments (including with installers) to ensure it's a valid approach. - The install is modular: it's possible to turn on/off installing the tests, sample_data and toolkits. - We continue to ship Agg and PyCXX because they both require patches that haven't been merged upstream. However, the infrastructure is now present to make these optionally use the system libraries. That remains unimplemented, however, because doing so would produce a broken matplotlib. - On Python 3.x, the latest release of pyparsing (1.5.6) has a bug that makes it completely non-functional. This has already been fixed in pyparsing's SVN [1]. The installer will warn when using a version that is too old, and importing matplotlib will raise an exception. There was some discussion on the mailing list about making dateutil and pyparsing optional dependencies. However, on actually trying to implement that, I'm not sure that makes sense. pyplot imports a number of things directly from dateutil, and we would have to deprecate those things in the API. pyparsing is required merely to parse a font descriptor -- so you'd be losing pretty core functionality without it. I have instead made them hard requirements. The installer will warn if they aren't around, try to install them with pip/easy_install, and failing that importing matplotlib without those dependencies will raise an exception. [1] http://pyparsing.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/pyparsing?view=revision&revision=219

But you do make a good point that `pip` should be mentioned in the docs as part of that change.

Mike

···

On 11/16/2012 05:54 AM, Mathew Topper wrote:

Hi,

I'm interested to know why the pip package manager is not more widely supported for installation of python packages like matplotlib? Matplotlib seems to be particularly slowly updated in the Fedora repositories, for example, so I often find that a source installation is necessary. I know this isn't especially difficult for the experienced user, but surely using something like pip would make this process for accessible for all users of python packages, particularly those that do not receive much attention from the big distribution maintainers? Yet, pip doesn't get a mention on the installation documentation of matplotlib or many other python packs.

I would love to hear anyone's thoughts on this matter.

Many Thanks,

Mat
--
Dr. Mathew Topper
Institute for Energy Systems
School of Engineering
The University of Edinburgh
Faraday Building
The King's Buildings
Edinburgh EH9 3JL
Tel: +44 (0)131 650 5570
School fax: +44 (0)131 650 6554
mathew.topper@...3926... <mailto:mathew.topper@…3926…>
http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/>

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

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Mathew_Topper · November 16, 2012, 3:25pm

Thanks Mike, that’s good to know. Will packages dependant on
matplotlib (I’m thinking of basemap) be encouraged to follow suit? I
know that python package management is a massive headache for our
system maintainers here, and any simplification would be gratefully
received.

Cheers,

Mat

···

One of the reasons (historically) is
that the build scripts predate setuptools and ships copies of
dependencies rather than using easy_install or pip to install
them. There is an open PR to address this here:

https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/1454

    But you do make a good point that `pip` should be mentioned in

the docs as part of that change.

    Mike

    On 11/16/2012 05:54 AM, Mathew Topper wrote:

Hi,
    I'm interested to know why the pip package manager is not more
widely supported for installation of python packages like
matplotlib? Matplotlib seems to be particularly slowly updated
in the Fedora repositories, for example, so I often find that a
source installation is necessary. I know this isn’t especially
difficult for the experienced user, but surely using something
like pip would make this process for accessible for all users of
python packages, particularly those that do not receive much
attention from the big distribution maintainers? Yet, pip
doesn’t get a mention on the installation documentation of
matplotlib or many other python packs.
    I would love to hear anyone's thoughts on this matter.



    Many Thanks,



    Mat

–
Dr. Mathew Topper

      Institute for Energy Systems

      School of Engineering

      The University of Edinburgh

      Faraday Building

      The King’s Buildings

      Edinburgh EH9 3JL

      Tel: +44 (0)131 650 5570

      School fax: +44 (0)131 650 6554

      mathew.topper@...3926...

      [http://www.see.ed.ac.uk](http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/)

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

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SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial.
Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications!

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Dr. Mathew Topper

  Institute for Energy Systems

  School of Engineering

  The University of Edinburgh

  Faraday Building

  The King’s Buildings

  Edinburgh EH9 3JL

  Tel: +44 (0)131 650 5570

  School fax: +44 (0)131 650 6554

  mathew.topper@...3926...

  [http://www.see.ed.ac.uk](http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/)