devpi has hidden dependency to pip>=1.4 about devpi

[devpi-bot]

Original comment by @lbrack

I wonder if adding --pre as a default action to the underlying pip command is a sane default behaviour.

We were wondering the same thing (and the guy on my team even used the term "sane" which I thought was strong at the time).

I think it should be based on the index type used. If volatile, I think this is the expected behavior. If non volatile (i.e. stable), the --pre should not be used IMHO.

[devpi-bot]

Original comment by @sober7

Just for clarification - my comments were related to the deployment of a devpi-server. I don't see why using pip's --pre option here is necessary. Using pip's --pre option to install a package from an index via devpi install is totally fine.

However, that doesn't affect my initial comment:

If devpi or more precisely the devpi-client and/or devpi-server rely on a feature, which is only available in pip-1.4, installation of devpi package should fail if the required version of pip hasn't been detected.

[devpi-bot]

Original comment by @hpk42

fix issue43: add pip>=1.4 to dependencies.

also bump version info to prepare for 1.0.1

→ <<cset 7e30e1769180>>

[devpi-bot]

Original comment by @hpk42

fix issue43 differently. To summarize the situation and reasons:

• devpi-server --gendeploy will instruct pip (without --pre) to
  install exactly the version of the invoking devpi-server.

• devpi install ... will now set an environment variable PIP_PRE
  which is only recognized on pip >= 1.4. This way "devpi install"
  will always install all versions, independently of the pip version used.
  Note that we cannot and should not depend on pip>=1.4 because
  devpi install --venv=TARGETENV will use the TARGETENV's pip anyway
  and i don't want devpi to require pip 1.4 in such situations.

The basic reason to go with allowing development versions with devpi
is that devpi manages releases and candidates through indices.
Adding pip's very recent ability (not supported by easy_install anyway)
would introduce a second way to manage release files. And it's clear
that "devpi test" neccessarily needs to install development versions
because otherwise it would be harder to test release candidates etc.

Note that if we didn't default to "--pre", you would get different
results if you used pip <1.4 and >= 1.4, and pip<1.4 is still widely
used (and required when using python2.5).

In any case, please note that "devpi install" is otherwise a very
thin wrapper - you can easily use your own configured pip/easy_install
command from wrapper scripts and ignore "devpi install" policies
if really needed.

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