Personally, I don�t use Windows and avoid it like the plague. Python is easy to install on Linux and Mac.

I�d start here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/python/overview-of-python-tools-for-visual-studio?view=vs-2022

From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+gweatherby=[email protected]> on behalf of Jim Lewis <[email protected]>
Date: Sunday, December 18, 2022 at 12:56 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Fwd: Installation hell
*** Attention: This is an external email. Use caution responding, opening attachments or clicking on links. ***

I'm an occasional user of Python and have a degree in computer science.
Almost every freaking time I use Python, I go through PSH (Python Setup
Hell). Sometimes a wrong version is installed. Sometimes it's a path issue.
Or exe naming confusion: python, python3, phthon311, etc. Or library compatibility issues - took an hour to find out that pygame does not work
with the current version of python. Then the kludgy PIP app and using a DOS
box under Windows with command prompts which is ridiculous. God only knows
how many novice users of the language (or even intermediate users) were
lost in the setup process. Why not clean the infrastructure up and make a modern environment or IDE or something better than it is now. Or at least
good error messages that explain exactly what to do. Even getting this
email to the list took numerous steps.

-- A frustrated user
-- https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list__;!!Cn_UX_p3!gdOs-oC1JZcmvMXy1G4irRpzHCUmF565UXVdCjzSWNGZKpmZ04I_llDX4WUeob3asBCjLe6TIthAAhmwFgbph9u1m9A$<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/
python-list__;!!Cn_UX_p3!gdOs-oC1JZcmvMXy1G4irRpzHCUmF565UXVdCjzSWNGZKpmZ04I_llDX4WUeob3asBCjLe6TIthAAhmwFgbph9u1m9A$>

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 12/19/2022 9:59 AM, Weatherby,Gerard wrote:

Personally, I don’t use Windows and avoid it like the plague. Python is easy to install on Linux and Mac.

That's not been my experience. Windows installers for Python have
worked well for me over many generations of Python releases. It's Linux
where I've found difficulties. For example, if your distro's Python
install didn't include tkinter (or even pip), how do you get it? It's different for different Linux distros. I generally have to use internet searches to find out.

For another example, when you use pip to install a package, it sometimes suggests that you install a newer version of pip itself. Should you do
that? On Linux, probably not, because the distro will have modified pip
so it puts things in distro-specific places. Yet there is no newer
version of pip available through the distro's package manager. Will
anything bad happen if you don't update pip? Who knows?

I have a Linux VM that has several versions of Python3 on it. Python3.8
came installed with the distro, but for some programs I need Python
3.9+. If I forget which versions I have, how can I find out? People
say to use which, but that doesn't work - it only reports "python3".
This does work, but it's not all that easy to remember (the grep "site"
part is just to filter out uninformative result lines):

~$ find 2>/dev/null ~ -name python -type d |grep "site" /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt5/qsci/api/python /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/_libs/src/ujson/python /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt5/qsci/api/python

Not that this task is much easier to remember on Windows, but it's not
harder. One way: the "py" launcher will tell you:

py --list
-V:3.10 * Python 3.10 (64-bit)
-V:3.9 Python 3.9 (64-bit)
-V:3.7 Python 3.7 (64-bit)
-V:2.7

This is not Linux-bashing, but there's no need for Windows-bashing either.

I’d start here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/python/overview-of-python-tools-for-visual-studio?view=vs-2022

From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+gweatherby=[email protected]> on behalf of Jim Lewis <[email protected]>
Date: Sunday, December 18, 2022 at 12:56 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Fwd: Installation hell
*** Attention: This is an external email. Use caution responding, opening attachments or clicking on links. ***

I'm an occasional user of Python and have a degree in computer science. Almost every freaking time I use Python, I go through PSH (Python Setup Hell). Sometimes a wrong version is installed. Sometimes it's a path issue. Or exe naming confusion: python, python3, phthon311, etc. Or library compatibility issues - took an hour to find out that pygame does not work with the current version of python. Then the kludgy PIP app and using a DOS box under Windows with command prompts which is ridiculous. God only knows how many novice users of the language (or even intermediate users) were
lost in the setup process. Why not clean the infrastructure up and make a modern environment or IDE or something better than it is now. Or at least good error messages that explain exactly what to do. Even getting this
email to the list took numerous steps.

-- A frustrated user
-- https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list__;!!Cn_UX_p3!gdOs-oC1JZcmvMXy1G4irRpzHCUmF565UXVdCjzSWNGZKpmZ04I_llDX4WUeob3asBCjLe6TIthAAhmwFgbph9u1m9A$<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/mail.python.org/mailman/

listinfo/python-list__;!!Cn_UX_p3!gdOs-oC1JZcmvMXy1G4irRpzHCUmF565UXVdCjzSWNGZKpmZ04I_llDX4WUeob3asBCjLe6TIthAAhmwFgbph9u1m9A$>

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tue, 20 Dec 2022 at 03:05, Thomas Passin <[email protected]> wrote:

That's not been my experience. Windows installers for Python have
worked well for me over many generations of Python releases. It's Linux where I've found difficulties. For example, if your distro's Python
install didn't include tkinter (or even pip), how do you get it? It's different for different Linux distros. I generally have to use internet searches to find out.

If you want to use your distro's Python and add more stuff to it
globally, then yes, it depends on your distro. This is not really a
surprise.

For another example, when you use pip to install a package, it sometimes suggests that you install a newer version of pip itself. Should you do
that? On Linux, probably not, because the distro will have modified pip
so it puts things in distro-specific places. Yet there is no newer
version of pip available through the distro's package manager. Will
anything bad happen if you don't update pip? Who knows?

Virtual environments work the same way regardless of distro, including
allowing you to install an upgraded pip. As long as your distro
provides the venv package (on Debian, that's in python3-venv), you can
just:

$ python3 -m venv env
$ source env/bin/activate
$ pip install -U pip
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
$ pip install some-package-name
$ etc etc etc etc etc

This is also a recommended way to do things on Windows, so you don't
even need to do things differently.

I have a Linux VM that has several versions of Python3 on it. Python3.8
came installed with the distro, but for some programs I need Python
3.9+. If I forget which versions I have, how can I find out? People
say to use which, but that doesn't work - it only reports "python3".
This does work, but it's not all that easy to remember (the grep "site"
part is just to filter out uninformative result lines):

Use what your shell already offers you! If you have multiple Pythons
installed, type "python3" and hit tab twice. You should get a list of
options. The exact shell you're using will affect how they're shown,
but I'm pretty sure most shells (at least, the ones designed to be
interactive - /bin/dash might not) will give you some facility like
this.

rosuav@sikorsky:~$ python3
python3 python3.5-dbg-config python3.8-config
python3.10 python3.5dm python3.8m
python3.10-config python3.5dm-config python3.8m-config
python3.11 python3.5m python3.9
python3.11-config python3.5m-config python3.9-config
python3.12 python3.6 python3.9d
python3.12-config python3.6-config python3.9-dbg
python3.4 python3.6m python3.9-dbg-config python3.4-config python3.6m-config python3.9d-config
python3.4m python3.7 python3-config
python3.4m-config python3.7-config python3d
python3.5 python3.7m python3-dbg
python3.5-config python3.7m-config python3-dbg-config
python3.5-dbg python3.8 python3d-config
rosuav@sikorsky:~$ python3

Yes, this is a bit noisy in that it has the -config and -dbg-config
tools listed as well, but you can easily see all the variants that are installed.

~$ find 2>/dev/null ~ -name python -type d |grep "site" /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt5/qsci/api/python /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/_libs/src/ujson/python /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt5/qsci/api/python

Ugh, that's a horribly inefficient way to do it. All you need to do is
search $PATH. If tab completion isn't suitable, you could probably use
"whereis python3", though it's probably a bit noisy.

Not that this task is much easier to remember on Windows, but it's not harder. One way: the "py" launcher will tell you:

py --list
-V:3.10 * Python 3.10 (64-bit)
-V:3.9 Python 3.9 (64-bit)
-V:3.7 Python 3.7 (64-bit)
-V:2.7

This is not Linux-bashing, but there's no need for Windows-bashing either.

There's no need for Linux-bashing when Linux isn't the problem. :)

And Windows wasn't the OP's problem. Nor was Python. The OP moaned
about a lack of IDEs, when pretty much every IDE and text editor out
there has Python support.

We're not here to bash anything. Well, except maybe the popular Unix
shell. I'll /bin/bash that every day of the week... ahem. Anyhow.
We're here to share tips and help everyone be more productive.

ChrisA

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2022-12-19 10:55:52 -0500, Thomas Passin wrote:

On 12/19/2022 9:59 AM, Weatherby,Gerard wrote:

Personally, I don’t use Windows and avoid it like the plague.
Python is easy to install on Linux and Mac.

That's not been my experience. Windows installers for Python have worked well for me over many generations of Python releases.

I haven't had any problem either despite being only an occasional
Windows user.

It is however, quite noticable that almost everyone who asks a question
about their Python installation on this list is using Windows. I don't
think this is just because there are more Windows users than Linux or
Mac Users.

It's Linux where I've found difficulties. For example, if your
distro's Python install didn't include tkinter (or even pip), how do
you get it? It's different for different Linux distros.

Yes, but most Linux users don't use a dozen different distributions. And
if you've used one for a while you generaLLy know their general naming conventions. So just guessing (with a little help from your shell's
expansion mechanism) the name will take you a long way.

So as a long-time Debian and Ubuntu user I just know that a Python
package foo will be packaged as python3-foo while a Perl package of the
same name would be packaged as libfoo-perl. Not exactly consistent, but
you get used to it. On RedHat (which I've also used for a long time) the
naming conventions are a bit different but also easy to find out.

For another example, when you use pip to install a package, it sometimes suggests that you install a newer version of pip itself. Should you do that? On Linux, probably not, because the distro will have modified pip so it puts things in distro-specific places. Yet there is no newer version of pip available through the distro's package manager. Will anything bad happen if you don't update pip? Who knows?

If I use pip on Linux I almost always install into a virtual environment
(rule 1: Don't mess with the package manager). So year, I can install a
new version of pip into that virtual environment without affecting
anything else.

I have a Linux VM that has several versions of Python3 on it. Python3.8
came installed with the distro, but for some programs I need Python 3.9+.
If I forget which versions I have, how can I find out?

I type python and then ctrl-D. The shell will then show me all commands starting with "python" in my path (your shell may have a different key combination for that, maybe tab-tab).

People say to use which, but that doesn't work - it only reports
"python3".

More specifically it will report *where* the exact command you named is installed. So "which python3" might report /usr/bin/python3 or /usr/local/bin/python3 or maybe /opt/python3.9.2/bin/python3 but it will
never report the presence of any executable not named "python3" and even
if you have several it will only give you one of them.

~$ find 2>/dev/null ~ -name python -type d |grep "site" /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt5/qsci/api/python /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/_libs/src/ujson/python /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt5/qsci/api/python

Not that this task is much easier to remember on Windows, but it's not harder. One way: the "py" launcher will tell you:

py --list
-V:3.10 * Python 3.10 (64-bit)
-V:3.9 Python 3.9 (64-bit)
-V:3.7 Python 3.7 (64-bit)
-V:2.7

But that works only for Python. Shell expansion works for any command.
If you use Linux, learn how to use your shell (and maybe learn different
shells - I personally prefer zsh, but I can also use bash, ksh, tcsh and
if necessary even sh).

hp

--
_ | Peter J. Holzer | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) | |
| | | [email protected] | -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!"

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On 12/19/2022 11:36 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:

On Tue, 20 Dec 2022 at 03:05, Thomas Passin <[email protected]> wrote:

That's not been my experience. Windows installers for Python have
worked well for me over many generations of Python releases. It's Linux
where I've found difficulties. For example, if your distro's Python
install didn't include tkinter (or even pip), how do you get it? It's
different for different Linux distros. I generally have to use internet
searches to find out.

If you want to use your distro's Python and add more stuff to it
globally, then yes, it depends on your distro. This is not really a
surprise.

For another example, when you use pip to install a package, it sometimes
suggests that you install a newer version of pip itself. Should you do
that? On Linux, probably not, because the distro will have modified pip
so it puts things in distro-specific places. Yet there is no newer
version of pip available through the distro's package manager. Will
anything bad happen if you don't update pip? Who knows?

Virtual environments work the same way regardless of distro, including allowing you to install an upgraded pip.

I have always disliked working with venvs and avoid it whenever
possible. But I suppose that's just me.

As long as your distro
provides the venv package (on Debian, that's in python3-venv), you can
just:

$ python3 -m venv env
$ source env/bin/activate
$ pip install -U pip
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
$ pip install some-package-name
$ etc etc etc etc etc

This is also a recommended way to do things on Windows, so you don't
even need to do things differently.

I have a Linux VM that has several versions of Python3 on it. Python3.8
came installed with the distro, but for some programs I need Python
3.9+. If I forget which versions I have, how can I find out? People
say to use which, but that doesn't work - it only reports "python3".
This does work, but it's not all that easy to remember (the grep "site"
part is just to filter out uninformative result lines):

Use what your shell already offers you! If you have multiple Pythons installed, type "python3" and hit tab twice. You should get a list of options. The exact shell you're using will affect how they're shown,
but I'm pretty sure most shells (at least, the ones designed to be interactive - /bin/dash might not) will give you some facility like
this.

Ah, that's nice. Though it didn't report python3.10 on the VM I
mentioned earlier.

rosuav@sikorsky:~$ python3
python3 python3.5-dbg-config python3.8-config
python3.10 python3.5dm python3.8m
python3.10-config python3.5dm-config python3.8m-config
python3.11 python3.5m python3.9
python3.11-config python3.5m-config python3.9-config
python3.12 python3.6 python3.9d
python3.12-config python3.6-config python3.9-dbg
python3.4 python3.6m python3.9-dbg-config python3.4-config python3.6m-config python3.9d-config
python3.4m python3.7 python3-config
python3.4m-config python3.7-config python3d
python3.5 python3.7m python3-dbg
python3.5-config python3.7m-config python3-dbg-config
python3.5-dbg python3.8 python3d-config rosuav@sikorsky:~$ python3

Yes, this is a bit noisy in that it has the -config and -dbg-config
tools listed as well, but you can easily see all the variants that are installed.

~$ find 2>/dev/null ~ -name python -type d |grep "site"
/home/tom/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt5/qsci/api/python
/home/tom/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/_libs/src/ujson/python >> /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt5/qsci/api/python

Ugh, that's a horribly inefficient way to do it. All you need to do is
search $PATH. If tab completion isn't suitable, you could probably use "whereis python3", though it's probably a bit noisy.

Sure is!

Not that this task is much easier to remember on Windows, but it's not
harder. One way: the "py" launcher will tell you:

py --list
-V:3.10 * Python 3.10 (64-bit)
-V:3.9 Python 3.9 (64-bit)
-V:3.7 Python 3.7 (64-bit)
-V:2.7

This is not Linux-bashing, but there's no need for Windows-bashing either.

There's no need for Linux-bashing when Linux isn't the problem. :)

And Windows wasn't the OP's problem. Nor was Python. The OP moaned
about a lack of IDEs, when pretty much every IDE and text editor out
there has Python support.

Yes, the OP's rant didn't make much sense to me, especially since it
didn't line up with my experience at all.

We're not here to bash anything. Well, except maybe the popular Unix
shell. I'll /bin/bash that every day of the week... ahem. Anyhow.
We're here to share tips and help everyone be more productive.

ChrisA

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tue, 20 Dec 2022 at 04:14, Thomas Passin <[email protected]> wrote:

On 12/19/2022 11:36 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:

On Tue, 20 Dec 2022 at 03:05, Thomas Passin <[email protected]> wrote:

That's not been my experience. Windows installers for Python have
worked well for me over many generations of Python releases. It's Linux >> where I've found difficulties. For example, if your distro's Python
install didn't include tkinter (or even pip), how do you get it? It's
different for different Linux distros. I generally have to use internet >> searches to find out.

If you want to use your distro's Python and add more stuff to it
globally, then yes, it depends on your distro. This is not really a surprise.

For another example, when you use pip to install a package, it sometimes >> suggests that you install a newer version of pip itself. Should you do
that? On Linux, probably not, because the distro will have modified pip >> so it puts things in distro-specific places. Yet there is no newer
version of pip available through the distro's package manager. Will
anything bad happen if you don't update pip? Who knows?

Virtual environments work the same way regardless of distro, including allowing you to install an upgraded pip.

I have always disliked working with venvs and avoid it whenever
possible. But I suppose that's just me.

That's fine. You don't HAVE to use venvs - and in fact, I only use
them for a relatively small number of projects (eg those that get
deployed to Heroku - make a venv, match Python version to Heroku's
offering, and install packages into it, for maximum consistency).
There are a few ways to manage things:

1) Always use your package manager. Don't use pip at all.
2) Install pip from your package manager, but then do user
installations (~/.local).
3) Install venv from your package manager, use virtual environments everywhere. 4) Build Python from source, parallel to your system Python.
5) Some combination of the above.

As you saw from my tab-tab demo, I have a LOT of Pythons installed,
many of them alphas and betas. Right now, my 'python3' command is
3.12, but /usr/bin/python3 is the system Python (3.9.2) and has
packages managed by apt/dpkg. So when a system-installed script tries
to run, it finds the Python and packages that were curated by the
Debian folks; but if I, at the command line, type "python3
somescript.py", I get a newer Python with packages managed by pip.
Sometimes I'll install those with "sudo python3 -m pip install X", but
mostly without sudo, and they land in ~/.local. (Installing as root is
useful when I need other users to be able to run the script - it's a
pain to try to install something into the correct low-privilege user.)

You have options. There's nothing wrong with picking and choosing
according to what's convenient for you.

ChrisA

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tue, 20 Dec 2022 at 03:56, Peter J. Holzer <[email protected]> wrote:

It is however, quite noticable that almost everyone who asks a question
about their Python installation on this list is using Windows. I don't
think this is just because there are more Windows users than Linux or
Mac Users.

Yes. I think there are a few reasons for that. One is that there are
many many lazy people in the world, and those people are likely to (a)
use the OS that came with their computers - usually Windows or Mac OS;
and (b) ask a question on a mailing list rather than spend some extra
minutes figuring things out with some web searches. An unrelated cause
might be a large number of student and/or novice programmers, who
simply don't have the groundwork knowledge to figure these things out;
and, again, they'll be using whatever OS their systems come with. Why
don't we see more Mac questions, then? No idea, and I'm not a Mac
person so I can't judge, but I would guess it's just a matter of
numbers - Windows outnumbers Mac OS (not counting iOS, which people
don't tend to be installing Python on) by a fairly significant factor.

I have a Linux VM that has several versions of Python3 on it. Python3.8 came installed with the distro, but for some programs I need Python 3.9+. If I forget which versions I have, how can I find out?

I type python and then ctrl-D. The shell will then show me all commands starting with "python" in my path (your shell may have a different key combination for that, maybe tab-tab).

Ah, interesting. When I mentioned tab-tab I was aware that there are
others, but I'm not familiar with Ctrl-D. Normally that means "send
the command as it is", so I assume your shell is set up to take an
unfinished command and tab-complete it. Which shell is that?

(Also - what happens if you Ctrl-D in the middle of a line? Does that work?)

But that works only for Python. Shell expansion works for any command.
If you use Linux, learn how to use your shell (and maybe learn different shells - I personally prefer zsh, but I can also use bash, ksh, tcsh and
if necessary even sh).

I agree, although I wouldn't recommend trying to get too much out of
sh as an interactive shell. It's best aimed at low-overhead script
running, and configured accordingly. Though it's sometimes good to
have some familiarity with a low-powered shell and the most basic of
input methods, just in case you're ever thrust into a situation where
a hard drive has crashed, /bin/bash is corrupted, you don't have
convenient access to external boot media, and you just want to get the
network interface up so you can do some basic fixes or data
recovery...

(Never been in precisely that situation, but I have had other key
programs unavailable for various reasons, and it's handy to know
alternatives!)

ChrisA

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 2022-12-20 04:15:07 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote:

On Tue, 20 Dec 2022 at 03:56, Peter J. Holzer <[email protected]> wrote:

It is however, quite noticable that almost everyone who asks a question about their Python installation on this list is using Windows. I don't think this is just because there are more Windows users than Linux or
Mac Users.

Yes. I think there are a few reasons for that. One is that there are
many many lazy people in the world, and those people are likely to (a)
use the OS that came with their computers - usually Windows or Mac OS;

Yeah. But also on Linux you never have to set up Python. It's just
there, ready for use (a few years ago, when Python2 way still the
default, you might have had to "apt install python3"[1] but that's it).
So the lazy Linux users never run into these problems.

I have a Linux VM that has several versions of Python3 on it. Python3.8 came installed with the distro, but for some programs I need Python 3.9+. If I forget which versions I have, how can I find out?

I type python and then ctrl-D. The shell will then show me all commands starting with "python" in my path (your shell may have a different key combination for that, maybe tab-tab).

Ah, interesting. When I mentioned tab-tab I was aware that there are
others, but I'm not familiar with Ctrl-D. Normally that means "send
the command as it is",

It means that only in cooked mode. Since an interactive shell has to
switch the terminal into cbreak or even raw mode anyway, it can mean
whatever the the shell wants it to mean.

so I assume your shell is set up to take an unfinished command and tab-complete it. Which shell is that?

zsh (with vi keybindings, although I think ctrl-D works the same with
emacs keybindings).

(Also - what happens if you Ctrl-D in the middle of a line? Does that work?)

Yes. For example if I type "ls foo", dann move the cursor back after
"ls" and type " --co^D", I get:

% ls --co foo
--color -- control use of color
--context -- print any security context of each file

If I then type tab, it cycles through the options. If I select --color=
and type ^D again, I get

% ls --color= foo
always auto never

Etc.

Debian/Ubuntu contains a ton of predefined expansions for zsh. Many of
them are very context specific and invoke other commands to figure out
the actual options (I guess that it actually invokes ls --help to find
the options of help, and for psql it definitely checks which users or
databases a local postgres installation has to provide you with sensible options at the appropriate position in the command line. There's also
remote filename expansion for scp and rsync, etc.)

But that works only for Python. Shell expansion works for any command.
If you use Linux, learn how to use your shell (and maybe learn different shells - I personally prefer zsh, but I can also use bash, ksh, tcsh and
if necessary even sh).

I agree, although I wouldn't recommend trying to get too much out of
sh as an interactive shell.

Yeah. If I happen to login to an account which has /bin/sh as the login
shell I'll invoke a different shell if I have to type more than 3 or 4
commands (and there is an alernative installed on the machine, which
these days is usually the case). But when I started to use Unix, the
Bourne shell was all there was. If you were lucky, there might have been
a csh, too, but that didn't use cursor keys either. At least it had a
history and you could use ! escapes to access it (I still use those in
zsh and bash).

hp

[1] Or use yum or zypper or whatever, or your GUI package manager if
that's your thing.

--
_ | Peter J. Holzer | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) | |
| | | [email protected] | -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!"

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I was suggesting a possible resource while making it clear I am not Windows savvy. My avoidance of Windows has nothing to do with Python, so there is no need to discuss it here.

If I don�t care which Python I�m using, I�ll type python3. If I want3.9, python3.9. python3 -V tells me the default on that system. (It varies across our servers).

If a Python package isn�t available in the mainline Ubuntu repository (python3-whatever), I�m creating a virtual environment. It just saves trouble in the long run. I have this in ~/bin to create an environment. I�m slowly moving projects to the
pyproject.toml because pip is complaining about the setup.py installs.


#!/bin/bash
VERS=3.8 #default version
VENV=venv #default environment name
if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
VERS=$1
fi
if [ $# -gt 1 ]; then
VENV=$2
fi
PYTHON=python$VERS
echo $PYTHON
$PYTHON -m venv $VENV
./$VENV/bin/pip install -U pip ipython
if [ -e requirements.txt ]; then
./$VENV/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
fi
if [ -e setup.py ]; then
./$VENV/bin/python setup.py install
fi
if [ -e pyproject.toml ]; then
./$VENV/bin/pip install -e .
fi

From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+gweatherby=[email protected]> on behalf of Thomas Passin <[email protected]>
Date: Monday, December 19, 2022 at 11:05 AM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Installation hell
*** Attention: This is an external email. Use caution responding, opening attachments or clicking on links. ***

On 12/19/2022 9:59 AM, Weatherby,Gerard wrote:

Personally, I don�t use Windows and avoid it like the plague. Python is easy to install on Linux and Mac.

That's not been my experience. Windows installers for Python have
worked well for me over many generations of Python releases. It's Linux
where I've found difficulties. For example, if your distro's Python
install didn't include tkinter (or even pip), how do you get it? It's different for different Linux distros. I generally have to use internet searches to find out.

For another example, when you use pip to install a package, it sometimes suggests that you install a newer version of pip itself. Should you do
that? On Linux, probably not, because the distro will have modified pip
so it puts things in distro-specific places. Yet there is no newer
version of pip available through the distro's package manager. Will
anything bad happen if you don't update pip? Who knows?

I have a Linux VM that has several versions of Python3 on it. Python3.8
came installed with the distro, but for some programs I need Python
3.9+. If I forget which versions I have, how can I find out? People
say to use which, but that doesn't work - it only reports "python3".
This does work, but it's not all that easy to remember (the grep "site"
part is just to filter out uninformative result lines):

~$ find 2>/dev/null ~ -name python -type d |grep "site" /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt5/qsci/api/python /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/_libs/src/ujson/python /home/tom/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt5/qsci/api/python

Not that this task is much easier to remember on Windows, but it's not
harder. One way: the "py" launcher will tell you:

py --list
-V:3.10 * Python 3.10 (64-bit)
-V:3.9 Python 3.9 (64-bit)
-V:3.7 Python 3.7 (64-bit)
-V:2.7

This is not Linux-bashing, but there's no need for Windows-bashing either.

I�d start here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/python/overview-of-python-tools-for-visual-studio?view=vs-2022

From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+gweatherby=[email protected]> on behalf of Jim Lewis <[email protected]>
Date: Sunday, December 18, 2022 at 12:56 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Fwd: Installation hell
*** Attention: This is an external email. Use caution responding, opening attachments or clicking on links. ***

I'm an occasional user of Python and have a degree in computer science. Almost every freaking time I use Python, I go through PSH (Python Setup Hell). Sometimes a wrong version is installed. Sometimes it's a path issue. Or exe naming confusion: python, python3, phthon311, etc. Or library compatibility issues - took an hour to find out that pygame does not work with the current version of python. Then the kludgy PIP app and using a DOS box under Windows with command prompts which is ridiculous. God only knows how many novice users of the language (or even intermediate users) were
lost in the setup process. Why not clean the infrastructure up and make a modern environment or IDE or something better than it is now. Or at least good error messages that explain exactly what to do. Even getting this
email to the list took numerous steps.

-- A frustrated user
-- https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list__;!!Cn_UX_p3!gdOs-oC1JZcmvMXy1G4irRpzHCUmF565UXVdCjzSWNGZKpmZ04I_llDX4WUeob3asBCjLe6TIthAAhmwFgbph9u1m9A$<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/mail.python.org/mailman/

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On 12/18/22, Jim Lewis <[email protected]> wrote:

Sometimes it's a path issue.

For whatever reason, Python installations on Windows lack versioned
executable names (except for the Microsoft Store distribution). Thus
adding multiple installations to PATH doesn't help unless "python.exe"
is manually linked or copied to versioned names, e.g. "python3.11.exe"

"python.exe" and "python3.exe" -> "python.exe". In this case, the

first installation in PATH is the default for running "python" and
"python3".

Using the "py.exe" launcher is the more general and preferred
solution. It allows running any registered Python installation. It's
also the installed handler for the ".py" file type, and it supports
Unix-style shebangs.

Or exe naming confusion: python, python3, phthon311, etc.

I don't understand what's supposedly confusing here. Here are some
commands to help discover what "py" or "python" commands and
installations are available.

* CMD: where py*.exe
* PowerShell: get-command py*.exe
* Python launcher: py --list-paths

Or library compatibility issues - took an hour to find out that
pygame does not work with the current version of python.

It should be a trivial task to discover that wheel packages for pygame
aren't currently available for Python 3.11. It is not unreasonable to
expect Python developers to familiarize themselves with pip and PyPI.

If you search a bit deeper, you'll find a site with unofficial Windows
builds of many packages, including pygame for Python 3.11:

https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pygame

Otherwise, while building some packages from source can be quite
involved and difficult, I'd expect anyone with a degree in computer
science to be able to build pygame if necessary. They even provide a
simple guide:

https://www.pygame.org/wiki/CompileWindows

Then the kludgy PIP app and using a DOS box under Windows with
command prompts which is ridiculous.

How is pip "kludgy" (i.e. sloppy, hasty, shoddy, or inelegant)? How is
using a command-line interface "ridiculous"? Many programmers and
system administrators actually prefer using command-line interfaces
and text user interfaces (TUI) for many if not most development and administration tasks. It's a matter of opinion.

---

Nerdy operating system discussion...

using a DOS box under Windows

The term "DOS box" refers to a virtual machine running 16-bit MS-DOS
in virtual 8086 (v86) mode under Windows 3.1 or Windows 9x, with the
MS-DOS keyboard and display drivers hooked to redirect I/O to a
desktop window. There is no "DOS box" in Windows NT systems. Windows
client systems switched to NT starting with Windows XP. Thus the term
"DOS box" is about two decades out of date.

Also, "DOS" is not synonymous with a command-line interface shell
(e.g. the 16-bit MS-DOS shell, "COMMAND.COM"). A "Disk Operating
System" is one that supports disk drives and filesystems, which
includes most operating systems from the late 1960s onward (e.g.
DOS/360 from 1966). There were several DOS systems for personal
computers in the 1980s, such as Apple ProDOS, Atari DOS, Tandy TRSDOS, Commodore DOS, and Microsoft MS-DOS. A DOS system can use a graphical
shell, such as running Windows 1.0 (1985) on MS-DOS.

The "python.exe" exec

On 12/19/22 14:47, Eryk Sun wrote:

If you search a bit deeper, you'll find a site with unofficial Windows
builds of many packages, including pygame for Python 3.11:

https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pygame

Semi-OT: that's been a superb resource, but apparently it's no longer maintained - internet scuttlebutt suggests the project which let it
exist has lost funding. The link above is a mirror, marked "Archived",
and I can't see there's been any addition since July 1. (sadly... I
happen to need an lxml build for experimenting with 3.12 alphas, and
that's an absolute bear to build for WIndows - I've never cracked it)

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On 2022-12-19, Chris Angelico <[email protected]> wrote:

There are a few ways to manage things:

1) Always use your package manager. Don't use pip at all.

If doing Linux work but your boss only knows Windows
and tells you to use pip that's a human problem rather
than a computer problem.

Delete his email without replying about the Christmas party
and if anyone asks refer to him as "Roger who?".

Using the package manager should take care of updates.

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