Python: How about updating setuptools, wheel, pip and installing setuptools-scm from git?

[KOLANICH]

Rationale: the stuff mentioned has a very long release cycle. It takes a while before features and fixes available in git are landed into release. I have been using the bleeding edge stuff from git in CI (installed manually upon python:latest) for a long time and experienced no problems with it, only benefits. So I think it may make sense to include this stuff into the images to ship it by default.

What does the community think about it?

[tao12345666333]

I think the official image is a foundation core, and it should provide a stable version of the tool, users can upgrade if necessary. There is no need to do this in the official image.

[tianon]

See also https://github.com/docker-library/ruby/pull/255, where we're actively taking Ruby in the opposite direction of this proposal (ie, leaving the versions of Bundler and RubyGems alone and simply providing whatever the particular Ruby release comes with).

IMO it'd be interesting/useful to have a similar conversation with the Pip (and/or Python) maintainers and see whether they feel like it would be better for us to continue bumping Pip to the latest release or whether we should instead level that off and eventually simply provide whatever version of Pip that Python comes with by default (as we're now doing with Ruby).

[riconnon]

Also related:
https://github.com/docker-library/python/issues/511

I think the comment by @tianon would be a good approach, pinning the versions of the core packages for the duration of a Python release series.