pip should reinstall .

[dholth]

When asked to 'pip install .' it would be nice if pip actually reinstalled it, rather than checking the version number.

[ianb]

Should the general heuristic be to reinstall local files that are given on the command line? This would keep local files in requirement files from being reinstalled automatically, which may or may not be a good idea, I can't decide.

(It should be feasible to determine why something is being installed using comes_from and so treat command-line arguments differently from other indirect installations.)

[dholth]

The heuristic would be local directories passed on the command line. I was developing something without using pip install -e and "my edits don't show up until I edit setup.py with a new version number" was rather surprising.

Is there just a way to reinstall one thing without updating all the deps?

[ianb]

I'm not sure there is, --ignore-installed would force a reinstall, but it'd force a reinstall of all the dependencies too. pip install -e should work okay, since edits should show up, and I believe it does force installation. But pip install . copies files and doesn't force.

[chrish42]

I'd personally prefer if pip install didn't do the work if none is required. It's "more idempotent" :-), and I think more useful when installing "released" packages. But I agree that an optional --reinstall that forces reinstall of the requested package (but not its dependencies) is useful. That would be my suggestion, if I can pipe in here. (Right now I'm using pip install --no-deps --ignore-installed to do that for my package in development, but it's a bit of a mouthful.)

[unhammer]

Perhaps an --ignore-installed-this option that ignores installed except for dependencies?

[rbtcollins]

This might be fixed actually; needs someone to test it :)

[xavfernandez]

This might be fixed actually; needs someone to test it

Not sure what is fixed/needed fixing ^^

pip install . keeps installing only when version changes and pip install --no-deps --ignore-installed . does indeed works fine and reinstall . everytime.

[rbtcollins]

'pip install .' should reinstall everytime

[piotr-dobrogost]

'pip install .' should reinstall everytime

Could you explain why?

[pfmoore]

I agree. I can see the logic that you're looking for a workflow of "do some edits / pip install .", but that's not the behaviour pip supports - you should be using pip install -e ..

If pip install . is special-cased to not check the version, then what about pip install .., or any of a number of other local directories that you might have been working in? What about pip install <full path to .>? You'd basically be saying that when you install any directory in the local filesystem, you should ignore the version, and I don't think that's a good idea at all.

IMO, you should either use pip install -e . or pip install --ignore-installed ..

[pfmoore]

(To clarify, I agree with @piotr-dobrogost's question, not with @rbtcollins suggestion...)

[rbtcollins]

@pfmoore I don't think . needs any special casing.

pip supports two means to resolve distributions: by name (where version constraints can be applied) or by location (where they cannot). Location should always reinstall in my opinion, because thats a lot easier to model for users.

'.' is just a commonly used location, but the logic applies equally to git+ urls, tarball urls (e.g. vcs exports), and working directories of dependencies.

[pfmoore]

@rbtcollins OK, I see what you're saying now. Not sure if I agree (I'll have to think about it) but I see what you're proposing.