[bug#46848] Questions regarding Python packaging

[Lars-Dominik Braun <lars@6xq.net>]

Hi,

> > What should be the use of having a package without pip? Anything else 
> > than saving a few KB?
> saving some space and unvendoring components that we also have separate
> packages for. (As I understand it, ensurepip, which installs both pip and
> setuptools, is merely a convenience tool if you install Python from
> source yourself – not for distributions.)
there is another crucial one: Collisions. Right now our python-pip and
python-setuptools packages are rather useless, because they collide with
the Python-bundled one. I’m trying to update Jupyter currently and
python-jupyter-packaging depends on a newer setuptools (v46ish) than our
python package provides (v41). Adding python-setuptools (v52) to the
propagated inputs (yes, it’s a runtime dependency), would be the natural
solution, but the resulting setuptools package in the build environment
for packages depending on python-jupyter-packaging is a mix between v42
and v52 and does not work.

Cheers,
Lars