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2021-06-26 12:30:11

Every year or so, I revisit the current best practices for Python packaging. I.e. the way you’re supposed to distribute your Python packages. The main source is packaging.python.org where the official packaging guidelines are. It is worth noting that the way you’re supposed to package your Python applications is not defined by Python or its maintainers, but rather delegated to a separate entity, the Python Packaging Authority (PyPA).

PyPA does an excellent job providing us with information, best practices and tutorials regarding Python packaging. However, there’s one thing that irritates me every single time I revisit the page and that is the misleading recommendation of their own tool pipenv.

Use Pipenv to manage library dependencies when developing Python applications. See Managing Application Dependencies for more details on using pipenv.

PyPA recommends pipenv as the standard tool for dependency management, at least since 2018. A bold statement, given that pipenv only started in 2017, so the Python community cannot have had not enough time to standardize on the workflow around that tool. There have been no releases of pipenv between 2018-11 and 2020-04, that’s 1.5 years for the standard tool. In the past, pipenv also hasn’t been shy in pushing breaking changes in a fast-paced manner.