Drop set_user_default.patch

[Barry Warsaw]

I want to drop Ubuntu's set_user_default.patch which didrocks applied back in 1.5.6-4ubuntu1 for vivid. I want to drop it for wily and revert back to the Debian version.

There are several reasons for this, as I now think it was a mistake to let this go out in Ubuntu. First, it deltas against Debian so it makes keeping things in sync that much harder (and it's already difficult enough to get pip packaged). Second, it deltas against upstream which means that users coming to Ubuntu's pip will see different, unexpected behavior (and coming from Debian too!). Also, upstream's issue https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/1668 is still open so we don't know how they will resolve it. Until they do, I want to drop this delta from Debian and upstream. I plan to do that either for the next pip 1.5.6 Debian release, or once I get pip 7 into Debian (which is currently blocked on new dependencies).

Speak up now or forever hold your peace. :)

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

It'd be good to get 1.5.6 into wily - I'm running into https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=786580

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Hum, nevermind. We have 1.5.6 in wily, just not -6.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Ok, ignore me.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

Hey Barry,

I disagree that this patch should be dropped. Look at the upstream bug and people thanking about that change, look at the g+ post and developers finding sanity in installing things locally.

I agree that it would be best to follow upstream rules, but seeing that this has been requested quite some time ago and don't see a real solution moving upstream, I have few hopes of this getting on time for wily. Do you have more information than the slow progress in upstream bug report?

Remember that we deliver a platform for developers, and seeing most of developers reactions and other tools, people expect things to install localy by default, and at least, not have a stracktrace on pip install foo because it tries to install in /usr/local.

[Barry Warsaw (barry)]

On Jun 18, 2015, at 03:09 PM, Didier Roche wrote:

>I disagree that this patch should be dropped. Look at the upstream bug
>and people thanking about that change, look at the g+ post and
>developers finding sanity in installing things locally.

Sure, but I'm also getting bombarded by comments from people who don't like
the change. The problem is that Ubuntu is different than upstream *and* every
other distro, so this breaks folks expectations too. I don't think the change
is a clear win when it's only in Ubuntu.

>I agree that it would be best to follow upstream rules, but seeing that
>this has been requested quite some time ago and don't see a real
>solution moving upstream, I have few hopes of this getting on time for
>wily. Do you have more information than the slow progress in upstream
>bug report?

I talk to upstream about it fairly regularly. They want to make this change
too, but they have higher priority things they need to fix first. I think the
best course of action would be to engage with upstream, submit a pull request,
and work with them to refine the patch so that it can land upstream. I'm
perfectly happy quilt patching our versions with an upstream accepted (and
landed) diff until they release a version with the fix.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

Hey Barry, I don't really understand how developers (talking about pip users, not upstream) are bombarding you about that change.

Indeed, we are transforming one use case which can't work:
Remember that the patch only changes the behavior when running pip install as a non root user, which was trying to install (and gave a stracktrace) in /usr/local, where it can't write. It's only in that case (to not break scripts in particular or people running sudo pip install) that we default --user, making a use case where pip was giving an error to one where it installs package. This seems to me to only be a win to developers, not a drawback. Do I miss anything?

[Pierre Haessig (pierreh)]

Could this patch be responsible for the bug I'm facing with pip --user install (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python-pip/+bug/1628432)?

[Christoph Reiter (lazka)]

upstream pip now defaults to --user if the system dir isn't writable: https://github.com/pypa/pip/pull/7002

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

In any case, this bug was about dropping deltas from Debian, not upstream and Debian/Ubuntu handle this the same now.