Downtime Investigations: Pipenv vs Poetry

Python projects start around a virtual environment. This helps organizing project dependencies and builds are deterministic. In this area there are two maturing tools Pipenv and Poetry. I've been a long time user of pipenv but it's never a bad idea to see what the other side has to offer. 

Handling Packages

Both Pipenv and Poetry organize project dependencies with a separate file for production and development. ie: requirements.txt, requirements-dev.txt

Pipenv uses a Toml file called Pipfile while Poetry uses a similar Toml file called pyproject.toml. Interesting side note, unlike Pipfile, pyproject.toml follows PEP 518. 

The difference here, I discovered, is that Pipfile is smaller in scope vs pyproject.toml. The pyproject.toml can be contain configs for supports tools like flake8 or publishing info if you're going to put the project up to pypi. You need a separate file, like say setup.py, in Pipenv to publish your project/package. 

Adding dependencies

Pipevn's Install command installs all dependencies if you don't specify a package. Poetry decided to have separate commands for add a new dependency and installing existing ones. In effect, Poetry ask the dev to be more explicit on what he's try to do. 

Poetry also has more info in the terminal vs Pipenv which is fairly spartan when installing something.

Pipenv installing pytest

Poetry installing pytest

Uninstalling dependencies

A thing that I discovered, Poetry uninstalls sub-dependencies. Pipenv does not. With pipenv you have to do something like pipenv uninstall [some package] && pipenv clean to do what Poetry does from a single poetry remove [some package]

Wrap up

Both Pipenv and Poetry goal's are to make dependency management easier and building projects more consistent. While pipenv has more broader support but I think that's just because it's older than poetry. Poetry has some interesting features like having configs in it's project Toml and uninstalls sub-dependencies. 

At some point in the feature, I think I'd like poetry in my professional projects.