what does pip do to not suck?
from irelephant@programming.dev to python@programming.dev on 28 Apr 2025 07:23
https://programming.dev/post/29371357
from irelephant@programming.dev to python@programming.dev on 28 Apr 2025 07:23
https://programming.dev/post/29371357
I’ve been trying to get luarocks to work on windows, and all it gives is cryptic gcc errors.
How does pip manage to work on most platforms without issues?
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@irelephant do anyone care a thing about windoze? :O
Lack of windows support for most luarocks modules has stopped me from writing a lot of stuff in lua.
Who are you writing package for?
backend stuff need not run on Windows at all.
I was thinking of making a simple SSG (Static Site Generator), and I wanted to make it in lua.
some other cli tools, like scraping scripts as well.
So web scraping speed is at issue? I believe Python has beautifulsoup for web scrapping.
Unless it’s for a learning experience, would recommend to not reinvent the wheel. Have been there done that too many times.
I feel like the village idiot cuz not properly learning that lesson.
No, speed isn’t the issue. Its installing packages/modules on windows with luarocks, the lua package manager. It doesn’t work half the time on windows.
@irelephant lack of support of an "operating system" that shouldnt exist at all is actually a great thing! ;)
most people are on windows, so if I make something, it should support that.
@irelephant it reminds me what my mother used to say all the time: "its not because most people are jumping into a hole that you have to as well" xD
pipcannot install some system dependencies your library might need. Windows is extra difficult sometimes, as the library might require some paths during installation, Linux is way easier for this kind of stuff. Either you use WSL, or you follow these instructions for Windows I found by googling github.com/…/installation_instructions_for_window…I use Mint btw
The instructions don’t work half the time.
I’d love to hear a technical answer, but one thing that’s probably part of it is the fact that pip is written in Python and Python runs everywhere without much problem (though uv also seems to work pretty flawlessly too lol)
Lua runs everywhere (almost), but I cannot install a uuid library on windows.
IIRC I’ve had pip fail like that too. Unable to build a lib it included.
Pip does fail sometimes, but its not half as bad as luarocks.
I’m surprised to hear you say this because in all honesty, pip really sucks as far as package managers go.
uvis a worthy replacement.Compared to luarocks, pip is amazing.
Maybe so, but pip is years behind package managers like
cargo. It really is not particularly good.Sure, and Luarocks is behind pip, and it really is particularly bad.
I think this is talking about basic functionality, eg. can you do basic stuff with a clean install without everything immediately breaking
There’s a lot of programming tools that are primarily developed for and on linux, and “windows support” is an afterthought which will result in linux being a very frictionless experience but windows being a minefield of problems and requiring careful manual setup
Today I learned about uv-package manager ; thanks!
If you’re getting gcc errors it sounds like the package you’re trying to install contains some c/c++ stuff that needs compiling.
A lot of python packages that rely on things written in c/c++ ship those precompiled, which might account for why it feels easier for you.
Sorry if it was unclear, I constantly get cryptic gcc errors using luarocks a package manager for lua. Its years behind pip.
No, you were clear. That’s what I understood you to mean.
Ah, I’m the one who misread, sorry.
Yeah, compiling things from scratch is the norm for lua packages, making them really only work on linux.
Pip is amazing. It does somethings in seconds that take anaconda over an hour to do.
It’s a 17 year old tool in the world’s most popular scripting language. It’s effectively had billions of tests run against it.
Pick a language like Perl, where some packages are written in C and some are written in pure Perl, and you’ll get to experience the same cryptic GCC errors, sometimes. There’s no secret to
pip; many Python developers upload wheels with pre-compiled binaries, including Windows-compatible binaries, and so you don’t have to run GCC because they already did it for you.Thanks, this is the explanation I was looking for.
Also, lua is the same, packages are either written in c or pure lua.
another interesting thing is optimizing runtime using mypyc. This is how our dev toolchain is so quick.
mypy, flake8, isort, … these kinda packages
Have never tried using mypyc would appreciate anyone sharing their experience with mypyc or other Python package compilers.