I don't deny that, what I am (and the article is) saying is that we were sold on Pipenv being "the officially recommended Python packaging tool from Python.org".

And PyPA didn't refute it, and Heroku didn't refute it, so the community bought it.

Yes, introducing a Lockfile is huge, and it was massively needed, and thats why when we were told "heres the official way to do it", we got excited. Then we got daily breaking updates, rude issue close messages, and a giant backtrack of "its free and still under development, why do you expect so much from us?"

I don't think that the parent disagreed with that. The point, as I understood it, was that this beta stage improvement was marketed as being ready. IOW, if pipenv was not Kenneth's project, it likely would have evolved in, to use your phrase, a straighter line.

That's kind of the problem. Why on earth are libraries and apps getting a different treatment? The JS ecosystem manages to have one tool for apps and libraries. One too for installing and publishing. All of it with lockfile support, workspace/"virtualenv" support, etc. And somehow, it's not confusing.

Adding one more tool to the stack is a really funky step forward. Yes, it brings lockfiles. Cool, although we already kind of had those (--freeze). Packaging in Python is a mess and I'm more and more in the camp that as long as Pipenv keeps flouting itself as "the better solution", all the while not covering all the basic use cases, we've gone backwards and are in even more of a mess.

This is a solved problem across a variety of popular and mainstream programming languages. I don't mean to suggest that the problem isn't complicated, but this isn't a problem that doesn't have a wealth of previously written solutions to look at for inspiration.

My Java app declares its dependencies in a build.sbt file using Scala syntax and has them cached in an Ivy directory. Yours declares them in a pom file using XML syntax and has them cached in a Maven directory. Neither of us even tries to do lockfiles and instead just has the CI server build an "uber jar" with all the dependencies bundled in.

I get why Python needs lockfiles, but goddamn, that need is a symptom of the mess of managing Python dependencies.

There's still a long way to go - I use Airflow for ETL management, and I'm using pipenv to manage it - except Pipenv can't create a lockfile because a dependency of a dependency of Airflow requires in flask-wtf <= 0.7, while another dependency of a dependency requires ==0.8

In a Maven pom.xml I can easily exclude or override the conflicting dependency manually if needed, but I can't in a Pipfile.

Well, that seems naive. Almost 1/4th of Maven Central libraries broke binary compatibility in patch updates: https://avandeursen.com/2014/10/09/semantic-versioning-in-ma...

Netflix, at least, doesn't agree that Java doesn't need lockfiles: https://github.com/nebula-plugins/gradle-dependency-lock-plu...

Yes, which is part of the reason why lots of Java projects almost never update their dependencies, because no one remembers why that version was chosen. Splitting what you want from what you have is important to communicate this.

> There's still a long way to go - I use Airflow for ETL management, and I'm using pipenv to manage it - except Pipenv can't create a lockfile because a dependency of a dependency of Airflow requires in flask-wtf <= 0.7, while another dependency of a dependency requires ==0.8

I'm not sure what you expect it would be able to do here...

Most shops I know use one of maven or gradle. I can’t think of any other serious contenders in Java (if you still use ant: please consider alternatives).

Poetry looks like it did just that though and I'm warming up to it at a very high speed.

Boot, and Lein. I'm partial to boot lately.

You wouldn't write your application to support 5 versions of Django, but you _probably_ would do so for a library.

That said, I do basically agree about `pip` existing already. We could have built a tool to manipulate `requirements.txt` files instead of introducing another format and a toolchain that is _much_ slower and brittler. Though ultimately at this point Python packaging woes feel like they are at a much lower level (the fact that libraries end up being "installed" mean that preparing all your dependencies to go out to multiple servers is a mess).

There's pip-compile from https://pypi.org/project/pip-tools/ that does exactly that. Pipenv uses its resolving mechanism if I'm not mistaken. It produces standard req.txt file with versions pinned and supports separate dev requirements. It had some bug with upgrades last time I checked though, not sure whether it's resolved, currently considering using it for projects at work.

Since its all just requirements files with pip-tools, its been fairly commitment free, in that I haven't had to substantially rework any major bits of workflow to use it - nor would I to remove it. Not sure I could say the same thing about pipenv and/or poetry.

The "library" workflow works for applications too. Put your direct dependencies in setup.py. Build wheels of everything and upload them to an internal PyPI server. Pin everything in requirements.txt.

That would be weird. Perhaps you mean 'flaunting'?

Huh? I'm not really familiar with the state of dependency management for Python/dynamic languages but... there's much more out there beyond just lockfiles. I'm a bit appalled Python is so far behind.

Much more in the field of build tooling/package management. Pinning versions is fine, but dependency resolution is another legitimate choice.