Comment by tibbon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tibbon | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I program in Ruby most days.

A while back I was trying to figure out something in Python. Python isn't hard, and I can read it (since its practically like reading Ruby) and get by writing it here and there when needed.

So... I'm trying to use some Python library (whatever your equivalent of a Gem is). I spent a few hours ripping out my hair trying to find good documentation for how to install and manage Python libraries. There didn't appear to be the equivalent of RubyGems or Bundler. There did seem to be 2-3 different ways of managing them (eggs?), but just getting those programs working on my local system wasn't liking me either. Googling for "Using Python libraries" didn't return much useful- nor did "Installing Python Libraries".

I'm still unclear what the standard method for managing these is. When I checkout a Ruby thing, I just type 'bundle install' and all is fine then.

Yes, the technical docs were fine- but the baseline "how do I get this damn stuff, working!?!?!" wasn't.

> I'm still unclear what the standard method for managing these is.

If only this was just a documentation issue. Alas, the reason is that there is no standard method. Here's a short practical article on how to install Python packages and get on with your life: http://dubroy.com/blog/so-you-want-to-install-a-python-packa.... For a longer historical perspective of this whole clusterfuck check out http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2012/6/22/hate-hate-hate-everywhere/

There are various methods for installing 3rd party python libraries from PyPI [1], including easy_install, pip, or just extracting the tarball from PyPI and running `python setup install`.

1: http://pypi.python.org/pypi

Edit: There's also the official documentation page called "Installing Python Modules" which covers the last of those three methods: http://docs.python.org/install/index.html

Edit 2: and from the FAQs, http://docs.python.org/faq/library.html#general-library-ques...

Package installation is a known pain point in python. The problem is one of a plethora of half-baked solutions.

For now, you can get most of the way by trying 'pip install X' or 'easy_install X', but there are important edge cases.

It's being worked on for Python 3's next big release, last I heard.

I think this might be an issue with what you're used to. We have things like rvm, gems and bundler: look at virtualenv, distutils/setuptools... The equivalent of a Gemfile is a requirements file, pip knows how to install these (pip install -r FILE).

If you ask me to do the same in Ruby, I'd probably be lost too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com