I just posted an update on my blog, about the work being done toward pip’s dependency resolver (https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/988) and what the plans are on that front.
I’m going to use this thread to share some in-progress notes on the resolver work.
As of right now, people who install pip from GitHub master will have the ability to run pip install --unstable-feature=resolver and test the new resolver code. And less than half of the test suite fails! Expect errors and missing features, but it’s there!
A proper alpha or beta release will probably happen in May, and we’ll be sharing a “what to test” guide and asking for a lot of testing at that time. I’m working on a pre-announcement now that will go to the PSF blog and that we’ll be publicizing from there, and of course linking to from our wiki page.
Our user experience researchers @ei8fdb and Georgia Bullen have been helping us think through specific decisions about the rollout. And they continue to interview you (please sign up if you haven’t already!) to learn more about people’s mental models, use cases, workflows, etc. They aim to put together a preliminary report this month to give pip’s developers some more systematic info, and I hope this will also be of use to some other packaging tools developers.
Ilan Schnell is working with us to improve our existing tests/testing and to add more tests to validate the new resolver.
Then, in May, we’ll be releasing a pip version that will include a beta version of the new resolver, and I will publicize that (along with a more in-depth what-to-test guide) even more.
Thanks again to Mozilla & CZI for funding enabling this work!
I’ve posted our mid-year report at the PSF blog. One key thing to know: later this month we’ll be releasing pip 20.2 which will have a beta version of the new dependency resolver (pip 20.1 had an alpha version) available via an optional flag “--use-feature=2020-resolver”. We’ll be publicizing pip 20.2 a lot and asking a lot of users to put the new resolver through its paces.
Since pip 20.3 will come out next month and the new resolver’s behavior will be on by default, the pip team made a 2-minute video to explain what’s up:
You probably have an extension or a Firefox setting requiring HTTPS, but the page is only served in HTTP. Firefox is raising an error (specifically PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR code) instead of falling back to HTTP.
I have HTTPS Everywhere installed, although typically it asks if I want to make an exception if there is no HTTPS. But I guess because the HTTPS handshake is failing it is just flat-out blocking me.
pip 20.3b1 is now out. We decided to release a beta this week and then release 20.3 in mid-November partly to avoid disruption that might affect people dealing with and countering US election-related unrest. Here’s the changelog.