pipx installation guide

[KyleKing]

I found that I could install xdot with pipx on Mac and the instructions should work for Linux as well (although I haven't tested):

# For Mac
brew install gtk+3 gobject-introspection graphviz
# For Linux, might be just:
# apt install gir1.2-gtk-3.0 graphviz

pipx install xdot
pipx inject xdot "PyGObject==3.42.2"
pipx inject xdot "numpy==1.23.4"

xdot file.dot

[lofidevops]

Confirmed this works on Ubuntu as follows:

sudo apt install gir1.2-gtk-3.0 python3-gi python3-gi-cairo python3-numpy graphviz  # from the readme
pipx install --system-site-packages xdot

xdot file.dot

[jrfonseca]

I hadn't heard about pipx before.

I've read https://pypa.github.io/pipx/comparisons/ but I still find it confusing. IIUC it creates a separate virtual environment for every CLI package?

At this moment I'm not sure if adding pipx instructions to the read-me would confuse more than enlighten, so for now I'll just leave this issue open as reference to whomever might be interested.

[lofidevops]

@jrfonseca Personally, I use it as a package manager when the package is available on PyPI but not through apt. There may be other use cases.

It is simple to use for pure Python packages with no system dependencies. More complex packages, like yours, require some special hints like those above. I agree pipx isn't yet so wildly popular that there's a huge incentive to include it in the README. Would you be ok with adding instructions to the wiki? Maybe a link from the README to the wiki? Up to you. I'm happy make the edit and/or PR.

[lofidevops]

Hmmm, or a new section "pipx users" under "Windows users" and "Debian/Ubuntu users". Then it's clear that if you don't already use pipx, you can ignore it.