`pip install Django` with "old" pips gets 1.8a1

[Kristian Glass]

Just had someone turn up in #django doing the 1.7 tutorial but with 1.8 installed. They'd followed the advice at ​https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/topics/install/#installing-an-official-release-with-pip which says pip install Django. Alas this had got them Django 1.8a1.

They were using Debian Wheezy (latest stable) which ships with pip 1.1. It looks like it needs pip>=1.5.6 (at strictest) to not get 1.8a1 - ​https://gist.github.com/doismellburning/fa8aa370df9835b592e0

As to whether this is considered to be:

• a packaging bug (i.e. "some users on currently-supported OSen will pick up the alpha version")
• a documentation bug (either "the install instructions should specify a version" (which I'd disagree with) or "the install instructions should mention this caveat")
• something to be ignored
• some thing else

then I've no idea, but I'm personally inclined towards the first from a "principle of least surprise" perspective.

[Kristian Glass]

Ah, this would probably be the pip 1.4 change to only install stable versions by default (​https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/news.html)

[Tim Graham]

Yes, we tried uploading a "pre-release" again for 1.8 alpha (#21108). However, looking at that ticket again, I think I was supposed to upload only the wheel file, since older versions of pip that don't support --pre also don't support wheel. I'll remove the .tar.gz from PyPI if we get confirmation on this.

[Kristian Glass]

Ah, that's a very nice hack! Cheers :)

[Tim Graham]

Source distribution has been removed from PyPI. Now I guess we wait for a ticket on problems with doing that. :-)