--quiet suppresses ssl errors

[jsha]

• Pip version: 9.0.01
• Python version: 2.7.12
• Operating system: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTC

Description:

I was trying to figure out why pip install -q <packages> was failing. There was error message output but it did not make sense. When I removed -q, I saw that it was hiding an important SSL error.

What I've run:

Note: I'm aware that overriding REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE caused the ssl error. My issue here is that the ssl error was hidden by -q, making it harder to diagnose the problem. In the actual use case, the setting of REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE was far away, so the issue was not as obvious as it is in this toy example. :-)

$ REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=pebble.minica.pem pip install -q josepy
  Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement josepy (from versions: )
No matching distribution found for josepy
$ REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=pebble.minica.pem pip install josepy
Collecting josepy
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/josepy/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: unknown error (_ssl.c:2831) - skipping
  Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement josepy (from versions: )
No matching distribution found for josepy

[pradyunsg]

Hi @jsha!

I like what you're suggesting. It should be a trivial change but I think it'd be nice to have someone else also pitch in to say this is a useful way to fix it. And also, I'd like to know what other @pypa/pip-committers think.

[bmw]

I agree that this would be useful. Especially in the case when this error is fatal, it'd be nice for pip to show the real root cause of the error rather than a generic message about being unable to find a satisfying package. Being a security error like this though, always logging it at a higher logging level seems reasonable to me.

[chrahunt]

IMO --quiet should be quiet, with few/no exceptions. For post-mortem if needed one could always use --log <file> alongside --quiet.

Showing the "real" cause of an error becomes more difficult when considering that multiple index servers may be configured and may sometimes be inaccessible in normal usage. This also becomes less of an issue if following the advice above and the logs are available.

[chrahunt]

I hope the above advice helps! It has been some time without any action on this issue, so I will close it.