Recommended way to install pip(3) on centos7

Question

I am interrested in knowing the recommended way to install pip3 for python3.6 (as of today, may 2018) on current version of centos7 (7.5.1804) and the accepted answer of How to install pip in CentOS 7? seems to be outdated because:

yum search -v pip

outputs (among other things):

python2-pip.noarch : A tool for installing and managing Python 2 packages
Repo        : epel

python34-pip.noarch : A tool for installing and managing Python3 packages
Repo        : epel

and python34-pip seems to be a (newer?) simpler way than the accepted answer of How to install pip in CentOS 7? :

sudo yum install python34-setuptools

sudo easy_install-3.4 pip

But since the versions of python installed on my machine are 2.7.5 and 3.6.3 why is it python34-pip and not python36-pip ? Is pip the same for 3.4+ (up to current 3.6.3) ?

Answer 1

1. Is pip the same for 3.4+

   No, it's not. A single pip installation serves a single Python distribution (pip2.7/pip3.4/pip3.5 etc).

2. Since Python 3.5, pip is already bundled with the python distribution, so you can just run python3.6 -m pip instead of pip.

3. Python 3.6 is not available in CentOS 7 vanilla repo. I usually resort to IUS repo when needing to install a fresh Python on CentOS. It always has the most recent Python version, the current one being 3.6.5. It also offers a correspondent pip package.

   $ yum install https://centos7.iuscommunity.org/ius-release.rpm
   $ yum install python36u python36u-devel python36u-pip
   

   Unfortunately, IUS doesn't offer a package for Python 3.7 yet so if you are looking for Python 3.7 on CentOS 7, building from source is your only option.

Edit: when yum is not an option

You should prefer the bootstrapping solution described in this answer as it is the most reliable way to get a working pip installed.