Suggest alternatives for --process-dependency-links

Environment

• pip version: 19.0
• Python version: 3.5.2
• OS: Ubuntu 16.04

New pip release v19.0 break --process-dependency-links flag. That completely sucks because :

1. there was no information in which exact version this flag will be removed. There was a warning like ‘Dependency Links processing has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.’ that we can see for a few years without pointing the exact date or version where it will be actually removed.

2. this feature is still using by a lot of engineers/companies. For example, it broke the whole build pipeline for all our python projects in our company. You just created a headache for thousands of engineers.

3. there is no clear explanation or tutorial about which alternative we should use instead of this flag

I would suggest to:

1. Give detailed explanation what should be used instead --process-dependency-links flag

2. Provide exact version where you are going to deprecate or remove some functionality. Especially in such a global project such as pip. Good examples are numpy and scikit-learn which mention in which versions they will deprecate some features.

[fake-name]

This exploded my CI pipeline yesterday/last night too. Maybe have a meaningful depreciation warning in the future?

Last I’d heard, dependency links had been un-depreciated (I don’t track issues here when things work), but now passing --process-dependency-links doesn’t just not work, but it causes pip to explode.

This sort of thing needs at least 3-6 months of a new warning on installs before it drops.

[pradyunsg]

The above issue was linked in the error message, however, I do think now that more explicit communication would have helped the situation. The deprecation messages should’ve mentioned the release in which the functionality will be removed.

I guess the ship has sailed here, but I’ll go update pip’s deprecation helpers so that something like this doesn’t happen in the future.