So I’m no expert, but I have been a hobbyist C and Rust dev for a while now, and I’ve installed tons of programs from GitHub and whatnot that required manual compilation or other hoops to jump through, but I am constantly befuddled installing python apps. They seem to always need a very specific (often outdated) version of python, require a bunch of venv nonsense, googling gives tons of outdated info that no longer works, and generally seem incredibly not portable. As someone who doesn’t work in python, it seems more obtuse than any other language’s ecosystem. Why is it like this?
No it’s not. E.g. nobody who starts a new project uses setup.py anymore
OP seems to be trying to install older projects, rather than creating a new project.
Are you sure? I’m not very active in that ecosystem, but if that was prevalent in the past, surely there’s still tutorials and stuff out there that people would follow and create such projects even today?
More than that, it seems to me that the official python docs for packaging [still] talks about setup.py. Why would people not use that?
Sure, there was some hyperbole. Some people need some specific setuptools plugin or something. Almost nobody.
when the official docs are telling you to use it, then it’s used. You can have no expectation of people to think the tooling isn’t shit when it’s literally the official recommendation.
It doesn’t. read the first words behind the link you posted:
Here is the actual one: https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/tutorials/packaging-projects/