Comment by Eduard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Eduard | Hacker News Reader

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I started with "sudo apt install python" a long time ago and this installed python2. This was during the decades-long transition from python2 to python3, so half the programs didn't work so I installed python3 via "sudo apt install python3". Of course now I had to switch between python2 and python3 depending on the program I wanted to run, that's why Debian/Ubuntu had "sudo update-alternatives --config python" for managing the symlink for "python" to either python2 or python3. But shortly after that, python3-based applications also didn't want to start with python3, because apt installed python3.4, but Python developers want to use the latest new features offered by python3.5 . Luckily, Debian/Ubuntu provided python3.5 in their backports/updates repositories. So for a couple of weeks things sort of worked, but then python3.7 was released, which definitely was too fresh for being offered in the OS distribution repositories, but thanks to the deadsnakes PPA, I could obtain a fourth-party build by fiddling with some PPA commands or adding some entries of debatable provenance to /etc/apt/lists.conf. So now I could get python3.7 via "sudo apt install python3.7". All went well again. Until some time later when I updated Home Assistant to its latest monthly release, which broke my installation, because the Home Assistant devs love the latest python3.8 features. And because python3.8 wasn't provided anymore in the deadsnakes PPA for my Ubuntu version, I had to look for a new alternative. Building python from source never worked, but thank heavens there is this new thing called pyenv (cf. pyenv), and with some luck as well as spending a weekend for understanding the differences between pyenv, pyvenv, venv, virtualenv (a.k.a. python-virtualenv), and pyenv-virtualenv, Home Assistant started up again.

This wall of text is an abridged excursion of my installing-python-on-Linux experience.

There is also my installing-python-on-Windows experience, which includes: official installer (exe or msi?) from python.org; some Windows-provided system application python, installable by setting a checkbox in Windows's system properties; NuGet, winget, Microsoft Store Python; WSL, WSL2; anaconda, conda, miniconda; WinPython...

I understand this is meant as caricature, but for doing local development tools like mise or asdf are really something I've never looked back from. For containers it's either versioned Docker image or compile yourself.

i think mise can support uv too as its backend https://mise.jdx.dev/mise-cookbook/python.html#mise-uv

Also I mean I understand mise but I personally just prefer using uv for python and bun for typescript both of which can run any version of python/ (node compliant?)

I still like the project though, but I tried to install elixir using it and it was a mess man.

The problem for me: a non-python developer, is that I just don't know what to do, ever, to run an existing script or program.

It seems every project out there uses a different package manager, a different version of python, a different config file to set all of that up.

Most of the time, I just have a random .py file somewhere. Sometimes it's a full project that I can look at and find out what package manager it's using. Sometimes it has instructions, most of the time not. _That's_ the situation I struggle with.

Do I just run ./script.py? python script.py? python3 script.py? python3.12 script.py? When inevitably I miss some dependencies, do I just pip install? python pip install? pipx install?

As a developer I'm sure that you just set it up and forget about it. And once things work, they probably keep working for you. But man, it really reflects negatively upon Python itself for me. I don't hate the language, but I sure hate the experience.

I believe what is missing is a way of distributing apps. You face similar issues if you get the C++ source of a random program - there are quite a few build systems in use! However, the compiled program can often just be zipped and shipped, somehow.

The C/C++ ecosystem is a bit more sane, but requires more expertise to fix. As long as you figure out the build process, usually you can rely on the distro packages. For Node and Rust, people really like to use the latest version and not the LTS one for their software.

I'm not in the market of selling python programs, but pyinstaller --onefile exists. It's imperfect, but I'm surprised it hasn't seen more uptake.

Uv solves this (with some new standards). ./script.py will now install the python version, create a venv, and install dependencies (very quickly) if they don’t exist already.

#!/usr/bin/env -S uv run --script # /// script # requires-python = ">=3.12" # dependencies = [ # "ffmpeg-normalize", # ] # ///

Your comment shows the sad state of software quality those days. Rust is the same, move fast and break things. And lately also Mesa started to suffer from the same disease. You basically need, those days, the same build env like the one on the developer's machine or the build will fail.

O was trying to install Stable Diffusion just yesterday. They use Conda, so I installed it and tried to follow the instructions. First, the yaml file they provided was not valid . Following the commands to install packages explicitly failed because my Rust toolchain was old, so I updated it just for some other Rust dependency to fail to build, it didn’t even compile . Such a shit show.

Bad software quality is when you update your software frequently.

Instead, we should always choose the common denominator of the most obsolete software platform imaginable. If there is an OS that has not been maintained for several decades, then that is the baseline we should strive to support.

Using an operating system with old libraries and language runtimes is not a personal preference with the consequences of restricting oneself to older software versions, no, it is a commandment and must not be questioned.

Please no, I have to deal with old (but still supported) RHEL versions, this is definitely not the way to go.

You have to use ancient C++ standard versions, deal with bugs in libraries that have been fixed years ago, lose out on all kinds of useful improvements or you end up with retrofitting a modern toolchain on an old system (but you still have to deal with an old glibc).

It’s hell. Just make the tooling/QA good enough so that everyone can run on the latest stable OS not too long after it’s released.

I think I have a similar experience in some ways, but building python from source should work on linux in my experience. On a debian ish system I’d expect apt installing build essentials and the libraries you need and you should be good. I’ve done it with some pain on red hat-ish distros, which have tended to ship with python versions older than I’ve experience with. (I guess it’s better these days..?)

I started at about the same time you did, and I've never seen an instance of software expecting a Python version newer than what is in Debian stable. It happens all the time for Nodejs, Go, or Rust though.

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