So I’m no expert, but I have been a hobbyist C and Rust dev for a while now, and I’ve installed tons of programs from GitHub and whatnot that required manual compilation or other hoops to jump through, but I am constantly befuddled installing python apps. They seem to always need a very specific (often outdated) version of python, require a bunch of venv nonsense, googling gives tons of outdated info that no longer works, and generally seem incredibly not portable. As someone who doesn’t work in python, it seems more obtuse than any other language’s ecosystem. Why is it like this?

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    8 days ago

    No, it’s not just you, Python’s tooling is a mess. It’s not necessarily anyone’s fault, but there are a ton of options and a lot of very similarly named things that accomplish different (but sometimes similar) tasks. (pyenv, venv, and virtualenv come to mind.) As someone who considers themselves between beginner and intermediate proficiency in Python, this is my biggest hurdle right now.

    • NostraDavid@programming.dev
      1·
      8 days ago

      Python’s tooling is a mess.

      Not only that. It’s a historic mess. Over the years, growing a better and better toolset left a lot of projects in a very messy state. So many answers on Stack Overflow that mention easy_install - I still don’t know what it is, but I guess it was some kind of proto uv.

  • kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@programming.dev
    1·
    9 days ago

    You re not stupid, python’s packaging & versionning is PITA. as long as you write it for yourself, you re good. As soon as you want to share it, you have a problem

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
      1·
      9 days ago

      as long as you write it for yourself, you re good. As soon as you want to share it, you have a problem

      A perfect summary of the history of computer code!

  • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
    1·
    9 days ago

    Python’s packaging is not great. Pip and venvs help but, it’s lightyears behind anything you’re used to. My go-to is using a venv for everything.

  • pixelscript@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    8 days ago

    Python is the only programming language that has forced me to question what the difference is between an egg and a wheel.

  • solrize@lemmy.world
    0·
    9 days ago

    It’s something of a “14 competing standards” situation, but uv seems to be the nerd favourite these days.

    • iii@mander.xyzEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      I still do the python3 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate

      How can uv help me be a better person?

      • NostraDavid@programming.dev
        1·
        8 days ago
        1. let pyproject.toml track the dependencies and dev-dependencies you actually care about
        • dependencies are what you need to run your application
        • dev-dependencies are not necessary to run your app, but to develop it (formatting, linting, utilities, etc)
        1. it can track exactly what’s needed ot run the application via the uv.lock file that contains each and every lib that’s needed.
        2. uv will install the needed Python version for you, completely separate from what your system is running.
        3. uv sync and uv run <application> is pretty much all you need to get going
        4. it’s blazingly fast in everything
        • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
          0·
          9 days ago

          It’s not a standard, it’s built on standards.

          You can also use Poetry (which recently grew standard metadata support) or plain uv venv if you want to do things manually but fast.

          • Zykino@programming.dev
            1·
            8 days ago

            Just use this one… or any of this 4 others.

            This is the issue for us, python outsiders. Each time we try we get a different answer with new tools. We are outside of the comtunity, we don’t know the trend, old and new, pro and cons.

            Your first recommandation is hatch… first time I’ve heard of it. Uv seems trendy in this thread, but before that it was unknown to me too.

            As I understands it, it should be pip’s job. When it detect I’m in a project it install packages in it and python use them. It can use any tool under the hood, but the default package manager shoud be able to do it on its own.

  • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
    0·
    9 days ago

    Just out of curiosity, I haven’t seen anyone recommend miniconda… Why so, is there something wrong I’m not aware of?

    I’m no expert, but I totally feel you, python packages, dependencies and version matching is a real nightmare. Even with venv I had a hard time to make everything work flawlessly, especially on MacOS.

    However, with miniconda everything was way easier to configure and worked as expected.

      • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
        1·
        2 days ago

        I haven’t heard of Mathy, but it seems to be a math tool?

        From what I gathered, miniconda is like pipx or venv. It’s able to create python virtual environments.

        But I’m very new to all of this so I’m not really a good source. However after experimenting with either of them (venv, pip or miniconda) I found miniconda the easiest to use, but that’s also probably a skill issue.

        I was genuinely asking because their could be something I wasn’t aware of because yeah I’m new to all of this. (proprietary, bugs, not the right tool…

        You seem related to programming, maybe you could give me some pointers here?

  • ad_on_is@lemm.eeEnglish
    01·
    9 days ago

    This is exactly how I feel about python as well… IMHO, it’s good for some advanced stuff, where bash starts to hit its limits, but I’d never touch it otherwise