Per-requirement --no-binary / --only-binary should not require name

[Kentzo]

• Pip version: 9.0.1
• Python version: 3.6.3

Description:

Currently both --no-binary and --only-binary require an argument even if they already belong to a requirement. Instead, they should not require any arguments. Specifying one should be an error.

Current:

pip==9.0.1 --only-binary pip

Should be:

pip==9.0.1 --only-binary

[pradyunsg]

Hi @Kentzo! Thanks for filing this issue!

This behaviour is useful when you specify more than one package as required for installation (say via a requirements file) where you only want to selectively specify these options for a certain package.

While it does get mildly repetitive in some cases, I don't really think that's are common/bad enough to warrant changing this behaviour introducing potential for ambiguity in interpretation of the command line and losing this fine control that the current form provides.

[Kentzo]

Current syntax should be retained. For requirements files it could be extended to deduce package name. Less space for an error.

[chrahunt]

Hello! Thanks for the suggestion.

I can see the appeal of implicitly applying options to the current requirement without requiring the option name. The downside of this approach would be the backwards incompatibility - we wouldn't be able to tell how to properly parse this for example: --no-binary --install-option 'example', because the --install-option is currently considered an argument to --no-binary. This coupled with the additional complexity added to the requirement file parsing logic (even after having been cleaned up pretty significantly) makes me lean pretty heavily in favor of keeping the current behavior.

Are there any other use cases we're missing that would justify the downsides?

[no-response]

This issue has been automatically closed because there has been no response to our request for more information from the original author. With only the information that is currently in the issue, we don't have enough information to take action. Please reach out if you have or find the answers we need so that we can investigate further.