Please forgive me for venting my frustration here, but my reaction to this is basically: oh great, yet another blinking tool to add to the list of misery that is the Python packaging experience. May as well check it out now before I have to do it in a hurry...

First of all it's not in Debian unstable. Ok, maybe it's just super new... so I'll install it with pip. A python3 -m pip install pipenv later and let's try it out!

$ cd ~/src/nexsan-exporter/nexsan-exporter
$ pipenv install
Creating a virtualenv for this project…
Using /usr/bin/python3.6m (3.6.5) to create virtualenv…
⠋Running virtualenv with interpreter /usr/bin/python3.6m
Using base prefix '/usr'
New python executable in /home/yrro/.local/share/virtualenvs/nexsan-exporter-Eq5p1XVG/bin/python3.6m
Also creating executable in /home/yrro/.local/share/virtualenvs/nexsan-exporter-Eq5p1XVG/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip, wheel...done.

Virtualenv location: /home/yrro/.local/share/virtualenvs/nexsan-exporter-Eq5p1XVG
Installing dependencies from Pipfile.lock (ca72e7)…
0/0 — 00:00:00
To activate this project's virtualenv, run the following:
$ pipenv shell

Cute emoji and nice colours but... ~/.local/share? For a directory that will end up containing arch-specific libraries? Ok, I guess no one gives a shit about this in the modern world, oh well. Wait... "python3.6m"? That isn't the Python interpreter I asked for... but it seems to be a hardlink to the same file as /usr/bin/python3.6 so I guess maybe this is intentional? Anyway let's check out the venv...

$ ls -l ~/.local/share/virtualenvs/nexsan-exporter-Eq5p1XVG/bin/python3*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 yrro yrro 10 Apr 30 17:06 /home/yrro/.local/share/virtualenvs/nexsan-exporter-Eq5p1XVG/bin/python3 -> python3.6m
lrwxrwxrwx 1 yrro yrro 10 Apr 30 17:06 /home/yrro/.local/share/virtualenvs/nexsan-exporter-Eq5p1XVG/bin/python3.6 -> python3.6m
-rwxr-xr-x 1 yrro yrro 4576440 Apr 30 17:06 /home/yrro/.local/share/virtualenvs/nexsan-exporter-Eq5p1XVG/bin/python3.6m

So this is the Python folk's what, fourteenth attempt to get this right, and they are still copying the python executable into the virtual environment instead of symlinking it in? This seems to be a regression from venv, which seemed to get this right!

Right, time to install my dependencies... according to 'pipenv' the right command for this is 'pipenv install -e .' Hm, I wonder exactly what the -e option does?

$ pipenv install --help

* no menition of -e in the output *

:sadface:

Oh well, let's just run it blind!

$ pipenv install -e .
Installing -e .…
⠏
Error: An error occurred while installing -e .!
Directory '.' is not installable. File 'setup.py' not found.

Maybe I screwed up and ran this from the wrong directory?

$ ls setup.py
setup.py

Weird, what's going on here?

$ strace -f pipenv install -e . 2>&1 | grep setup\\.py
stat("/home/yrro/src/nexsan-exporter/nexsan-exporter/setup.py", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1769, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/yrro/src/nexsan-exporter/setup.py", 0x7ffc013a0200) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[pid 7365] stat("./setup.py", 0x7fff84176e30) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/home/yrro/src/nexsan-exporter/setup.py", 0x7ffc013a0300) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
write(2, "Directory '.' is not installable"..., 62Directory '.' is not installable. File 'setup.py' not found.

Oh FFS, I give up. I think I'll let pipenv pass me by for now.