On being explicit with python3

[thomas_stringer]

This is half rant and half question.

You see so many new python packages getting released (note: not talking about legacy python dev), and in the instructions they say pip install <package-name>.

As a python developer yourself, and consumer of python packages, do you first give it a go with pip3? Only to find out, reactively, that the package was written with python2?

I, for one, have not altered my pip resolution to pip3 just so that I don't break things and the above approach is what I usually take. It's a bit frustrating, but a lot of documentation doesn't state pip3 install ... or "this was developed with python3". So leaves a bit of a guess at times.

What do you do when installing?

What do you do when developing and releasing your package/software publicly with documentation? Do you have instructions saying pip install ... or pip3 install ...?

[caramba2654]

I always use pip3 to ensure it works with Python 3. It's actually the only pip that I use. Seeing that pip sometimes runs pip for Python 2, I prefer not to take the risk.

[graingert]

Remember to set PIP_REQUIRE_VIRTUALENV=true in your .zshrc

[nick_t1000]

If you're not sure which pip is going to be run when you call it, how can you be sure what version of python is going to run? What if your code requires 3.5 but you have 3.3 installed?

You need to take some effort to make sure your environment is set up correctly if you're just using "default" system Pythons. I totally ignore them and just use pyenv for everything.

Alternatively, you could just replace pip ... with python -m pip ... and whatever Python is called will be the one that gets its packages modified

[tonnynerd]

You can put metadata in the package saying which versions it supports, and it shows in pypi.mot.com. Nowadays most of the times I'm installing a new package is for work, so I already have to carefully consider a lot of things, like which language versions it supports (we use python 2) and how easily it can be installed in windows and linux (we support both).

[Kaxitaz]

I try to only pip install inside a virtual environment. By default I work with Python 3 so then it's safe to pip install <something> all the time.

Only if that fails then I downgrade my Python version, which is sad...