[whalesalad]

it's because so many essential system tools now rely on python, and if you install arbitrary code outside of a venv it can clobber the global namespace and break the core OS' guarantees.

I do agree it is annoying, and what they need to do is just provide an automatic "userspace" virtualenv for anything a user installs themselves... but that is a pandoras box tbh. (Do you do it per user? How does the user become aware of this?)

[dragonwriter]

What they needed to do is allow side-by-side installs of different versions of the same distribution package and allow specifying or constraining versions at import time, then you wouldn't have the problem at all.

But that's probably not practical to retrofit given the ecosystem as it is now.

[kevin_thibedeau]

That couldn't happen with Debian's dist_packages which was explicitly for the the system tools managed by apt.

[aunderscored]

pipx solves this perfectly.

[zahlman]

For "applications" (which are distributed on PyPI but include specified entry points for command-line use), yes. For development — installing libraries that your own code will use — you'll still generally need something else (although the restriction is really quite arbitrary).

[aunderscored]

Agreed! Sorry my read was for apps. You can use --user with pip to install into the user site rather than the system site, however it still causes overlap which can be problematic