setuptools dependencies and freeze

setuptools doesn’t vendor its dependencies anymore (ref. https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/581 and https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/commit/ff371f18f0076bc63da05334f7e551c1cc29e10d). Unfortunately this affects pip freeze and breaks our workflow around it. Below you’ll find what happens in a clean environment:

$ pip freeze

appdirs==1.4.0
packaging==16.8
pyparsing==2.1.10
six==1.10.0

Of course those are not my dependencies and I don’t want to see them in my requirements.txt file. pip already hides pip (itself), setuptools and wheel packages from freeze. It should do (recursively) the same with the dependencies of these packages. Alternatively we can start to treat setuptools as a regular package and show it (with its dependencies) in freeze. The latter option implies that setuptools should not be automatically installed anymore when installing pip.

[philtay]

@pfmoore Then the breaking changes to setuptools (requiring vs vendoring) should have been made after PEP 518. Now all we have is your idea of “compromise”. But in the future it’ll be better. Like the daily dependency hell we’re exposed to isn’t enough. Sigh. I’m going to spend the next few days fixing all the problems this caused and, after PEP 518, I’ll do it again. Hurrah. Sorry if this message sounds rude or disrespectful. Not my intention. Just frustration.

[philtay]

@jaraco The official way to install pip also installs setuptools (and wheel). If setuptools is just a regular package it should not be included in any way during pip installation. Moreover pip freeze should treat it just like any other package, showing it along with its dependencies.