On January 23, 2021, Lars-Dominik Braun <lars@6xq.net> wrote:

[...] Remove pip and
setuptools from python (saves almost 20MiB from the closure and avoids
weird conflicts between python’s setuptools and python-setuptools) and
turn them into (almost) ordinary packages.

I think if we do that then Python will need a treatment similar to GCC, where we don't expose the package and instead offer a compound package (could be called "python-toolchain" or just "python") which includes pip and setuptools. The last decades of python packaging have trained people that when you install python you get pip and setuptools as well, I think we should not try to be too clever and violate that assumption.

Also, for what it's worth, we already have python-minimal which doesn't have pip, and it's only