User experience issues

A rough list of existing GitHub issues, StackOverflow questions, blog posts, Twitter threads, etc. that mention UX issues in pip in particular (and, inevitably, Python packaging and distribution in general). Work in progress toward https://wiki.python.org/psf/Pip2020DonorFundedRoadmap .

"starter" notes from @pradyunsg

I think the "Improve User Experience" would be a good place to go after looking at this list. There's some overlap with that list of issues and the ones I've listed here:

• User facing interface for building Python packages
  • The tip of this iceberg is here: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/6041
  • Eventually became a discuss.python.org thread: https://discuss.python.org/t/2062
  • Also related: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/6817
  • Also related sub-iceberg: https://discuss.python.org/t/2570
• Revisiting pip's output format
  • An old issue with some of the past discussion: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/4649
    • Related note about why the structure proposed there wouldn't work.
    • https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/4649#issuecomment-333690763
  • A proper dependency resolver will not fit into our current approach very well.
    • We'd probably want a high-bandwidth discussion on this.
• Identifying what functionality is "key" to most of our users
  • Old issue tracking that: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/6182
    • (there's not much context there, so elaborating here)
  • pip has a large-ish CLI surface area
    • Lots of flags/options which result in nuanced behaviors.
    • Difficult to identify what functionality is used by our users.
    • Difficult to identify what functionality doesn't work as per user expectations.
  • Goal would be to understand the CLI-based workflows better, to later simplify it CLI.
    • see also: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/6099

Mailing list threads and other conversations/posts

• Nathaniel Smith's "idealized lifecycle of a Python project" and related notes
• Brett Cannon on why you should use python -m pip rather than just pip on the command line (note that most people do not do this and it would be a big education task to persuade more users to do this), and associated Twitter thread
• "Drawing a line to the scope of Python packaging" discussion
• Nick Coghlan on the packaging ecosystem
• Bernat Gabor on the state of Python packaging, past, present, and future, and growing pains
• this issues-only repo as a whole
• PyVideo conference videos about pip and packaging
• https://github.com/themanifest/package-management-glossary