Installation documentation issue.
Closed this issue · 2 comments
The documentation for the globus-cli says that for the installation instructions, go to https://docs.globus.org/cli/ which has a minor 'instruction' section that says:
Installation
We enthusiastically recommend using pipx to install the Globus CLI. It provides an isolated environment to keep your CLI installation running smoothly, and it’s resilient to changes in your system’s python installation. An example workflow for installing and managing the CLI would be:
Which does not include an alternative to the "enthusiastically recommended" (recommended != required) method of installation. (The example doesn't offer any choice either.)
If the pipx solution is the only choice, please say so.
Otherwise, please offer installation instructions that don't depend on pipx.
Thanks all!
We found the previous instructions -- which were quite long -- confused many users. That is why the installation section is so minimal.
The globus-cli is a python package available from pypi.
You can install it with pip:
pip install globus-cli
Which means that anywhere that pip works, globus-cli is installable.
However, because pipx covers installation into a virtualenv, symlinking from ~/.local/bin/ (regardless of where site.USER_BASE is), and PATH manipulation, we strongly recommend that most users use it.
I'll see to it that we amend the docs to note pipx first and pip secondarily, but I don't believe that we want to restore the verbose instructions for creating a virtualenv and symlinking to it in order to get an isolated install. Users either have enough knowledge and expertise to do this themselves based on the fact that it's a pip package, or they should use pipx.
It took a bit longer than I had hoped, but we've updated our docs to include pip as an alternative for installation.
You can see the new docs live on the site.