python-pip yum package provides pip-python instead of pip

Question

I installed python-pip package via yum (using Fedora's updates repo). It does not add the pip script to my PATH though.

$ which pip
/usr/bin/which: no pip in
                (/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:
                 /usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin)

It does, however, create pip-python:

$ rpm -ql python-pip
/usr/bin/pip-python
[...snip...]

$ which pip-python
/usr/bin/pip-python

I was considering making pip a symbolic link to pip-python but is there a reason the executable is named pip-python to begin with?

Answer 1

It is probably to avoid a conflict with another package that has an executable called pip. As long as you don't install that package, you should be safe.

Another annoying example of this is the chromium browser, which my distro's executable is chromium-browser to avoid a conflict with some game I had never heard of until I did an: apt-get install chromium.

Answer 2

If you install the python-pip package and then run:

pip-python install -U pip

pip will fix itself.

Answer 3

This used to be the case on Fedora, due to the conflict noted with the perl-pip package. With the gracious consent of the perl-pip packager, this has been updated in recent versions, so installing pip-python on Fedora 17 or later now installs /usr/bin/pip

See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=958377 for details.