Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
81 lines (69 loc) · 4.11 KB

vs-pipx.md

File metadata and controls

81 lines (69 loc) · 4.11 KB
Raw

Comparison of pae vs. pipx

pae and pipx both build and use virtual environments; pipx differs primarily in that it's focused on running Python command-line programs. Though pae does this as well, it doesn't do it quite so conveniently. In particular, pipx has the following advantages:

  • pipx works from any shell, not just Bash.
  • pipx install PACKAGE adds links for all command-line programs in PACKAGE (but not its dependencies) to a directory (~/.local/bin/) in your existing $PATH, allowing you to type simply grip after a pipx install grip. pae makes you type pae grip instead.
  • pipx run creates ephemeral virtual environments that are removed after the program is run. (This is obviously slower to start the program than using an installed environment.) With pae you must manually remove an environment after running your program if you don't want it after that.
  • pipx install, after the first time you run it, will be create virtual environments faster than pae (pae -c ENV) because pipx re-uses the existing pip and venv packages whereas pae re-downloads and re-installs them every time. (Package installs after that are the same speed.)

pae is focused more on general use of virtual environments, and so has the following advantages over pipx:

  • It can more easily run any command-line program in a virtual environment, using pae ENV PROGRAM or, when the program and environment name are the same, pae PROGRAM. With pipx, you need to give the full path to the virtual environment for programs that did not have links installed: ~/.local/share/pipx/ENV/bin/PROGRAM.
  • pae more easily supports having different versions of packages and Python by creating different virtual environments for them. E.g., you can have pae grip4-py12 grip and pae grip3-py8 grip run two different versions of grip under two different versions of Python.
  • It can more easily activate a virtual environment using pae -a ENV. With pipx you need to source ~/.local/share/pipx/ENV/bin/activate.
  • pae uses pactivate, which can work better to support development in a code repository.

Further, pae is smaller and has fewer dependencies than pipx (even when pipx is used as a zipapp with python3 pipx.pyz ...) and supports more environments:

  • pipx runs only on Python versions ≥3.8. pae supports Python 2.7 and Pythons 3.4 upward.
  • pae always uses the latest virtualenv package, not the venv subset used by pipx. As compared to venv, virtualenv is faster, more extensible, has a richer programmatic API and gets bug fixes and new features more quickly.
  • pae requires only a small subset of the Python standard library which is usually provided entirely by the minimal Python package in most Linux distributions.
    • pipx requires venv which, on systems such as Debian/Ubuntu, requires installation of the OS python3-venv package.
    • pae requires extra packages only on Debian 11/Ubuntu 21.10 and below, where it requires the OS python3-distutils package.

Command Comparison

Here are some common pipx commands and their pae equivalents:

  pipx                      pae
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  pipx install PKG          pae -c PKG PKG
  PKG                       pae PKG
  pipx list                 pae -l
  pipx inject APKG BPKG     pae APKG pip install BPKG
  ─                         pae PKG PROG       # run another program in PKG

If the executable name doesn't match the package name, pae can handle this by letting you use the executable name as the virtual environment name: pae -c PROG PKG, so pae PROG will run that program. It's not clear to me how to do this with pipx.