The reason why virtualenv exists is because different apps may have conflicting requirements, and you have apps that need to be deployed in different environments with different versions of different libraries. I know that even if I were developing against versions of libraries in system packages, I'd still end up having to use virtualenv in development (EDIT: I wrote 'production' here by accident) because my stuff gets deployed on different versions of Debian and RHEL, necessitating virtual environments if only so that I can make my development environment as close to production as possible.
> In the year 2015, pip went from version 1.5.6 to 8.1.1 (!) through 24 version bumps, introducing thirteen (documented) backwards incompatibilities.
Much of that has been down to efforts in recent years to finally fix the major issues with Python packaging. It has settled down quite a bit. Also, the 1.* to 8.* change is because the initial '1' was dropped: 8.* is essentially 1.8.* in the old versioning scheme.
I'm not saying that this couldn't have been handled better, but it's not just a 'hummingbirds off of their ritalin' situation: Python spent many years with packaging stagnated, and what you're seeing is rapid development to fix the mess that years of PJE-related neglect caused.
The reason why virtualenv exists is because different apps may have conflicting requirements, and you have apps that need to be deployed in different environments with different versions of different libraries. I know that even if I were developing against versions of libraries in system packages, I'd still end up having to use virtualenv in development (EDIT: I wrote 'production' here by accident) because my stuff gets deployed on different versions of Debian and RHEL, necessitating virtual environments if only so that I can make my development environment as close to production as possible.
> In the year 2015, pip went from version 1.5.6 to 8.1.1 (!) through 24 version bumps, introducing thirteen (documented) backwards incompatibilities.
Much of that has been down to efforts in recent years to finally fix the major issues with Python packaging. It has settled down quite a bit. Also, the 1.* to 8.* change is because the initial '1' was dropped: 8.* is essentially 1.8.* in the old versioning scheme.
I'm not saying that this couldn't have been handled better, but it's not just a 'hummingbirds off of their ritalin' situation: Python spent many years with packaging stagnated, and what you're seeing is rapid development to fix the mess that years of PJE-related neglect caused.