pvp VS pip-tools

I use a small shell script I wrote in jest a year ago (https://github.com/senko/pvp), it boils down to virtualenv and pip, and it basically solves all Python package management issues for me.

I was burned by pipenv before (naively trying to use it because a certain prominent member of Python community hyped it up, and I hadn't known he'd gone off the rails). I can find no redeeming qualities to it whatsoever, and it scarred me enough that I don't want to touch other newer tools (poetry, pdm, whatever) with a 10ft pole.

I find solace in pip and virtualenv just working and not trying to be too clever.

I pin all my immediate reqs, and if there's a conflict with indirect deps (which happened maybe once or twice), I figure out the version I need and pin that manually.

For packaging I rely on specialized tools that do just that (build, twine), and don't need one-with-everything spaceship of a tool.

I also develop in Node and have suffered much more grief by npm. I lost count of the number of times where I had to rm-rf node modules and npm cache, rerun and hope for the best.

I only use and swear by pvp.

So I got y'all a little early Xmas present: PvP, the Python package manager to end all Python package managers!

> Why is the "requirements.txt" file a stupid flat listing of all transitive dependencies with pinned versions? It makes it harder to change library versions even if there are no true conflicts.

My friend, here is what you seek: https://github.com/jazzband/pip-tools

requirements.txt is flat because it's really the output of `pip freeze`. It's supposed to completely and exactly rebuild the environment. Unfortunately it's far too flexible and people abuse it by putting in only direct dependencies etc.

If you're writing packages, you don't need a requirements.txt at all, by the way. Package dependencies (only direct dependencies) live in pyproject.toml with the rest of the package config. requirements.txt (and pip tools) are only for when you want to freeze the whole environment, like for a server deployment.

For all my projects I found myself regenerating manual lock files using complex shell commands with pip-compile to get a reproducible environments across devices using a custom pre-install-command. I finally decided that instead of hacking together the same solution on all my projects I would build a plugin that handles this complexity for me.

Instead of venv, we are using pip-tools in this starter kit. pip-tools take things further in dependency management. Check out what pip-tools does in their official GitHub repo. In short, it helps your project find the best match for the dependent packages. For example, you might need two packages A and B in your project that requires same package C under the hood. But A requires any version of C from 1.0.1 to 1.0.10 and B requires any version of C from 1.0.7 to 1.0.15. Pip tools will automatically compile the version of 'C' that suits for both of your packages.

I've created a small project called just-pip-tools that combines pip-tools and just to manage Python dependencies in a layered approach. This isn't a magic bullet; it's a set of files you can adapt to your needs.

For small projects I recommend pip-tools. Just write packet list in requirements.in and pip-compile compile a requirements.txt with comments.

Take a look at pip-tools, great package. https://github.com/jazzband/pip-tools

pip-tools

I recommend generating a lockfile to document this information, as you might do with pip-tools.

Check out pip-tools [1] which does exactly that, albeit in a slightly more polished way.

[1]: https://github.com/jazzband/pip-tools