Bug report

Seepypa/pip#11982 for background. Basically, pip added a mechanism for users to configure the "base" (installation-wide) settings. This mechanism picks up apip.ini file that is shipped with the Windows Store installation of Python. The problem is that the shipped config file sets the--user option globally, meaning that it gets picked up in virtual environments as well, which causes pip to fail.

IMO, the pip feature needs reconsidering, to allow for the possibility of something like this, but it's also true that we adviseagainst setting--user in configuration files. So I think the Windows Store distribution should consider other mechanisms for handling whatever issue prompted the addition of this config. If that requires changes from pip's side, please reach out - we already have a check if site-packages is writeable and we fall back to--user if it isn't, so we could definitely consider extending that check.

Linked PRs

• gh-103646: Remove --include-pip-user from default APPX package build #105064
• [3.12] gh-103646: Remove --include-pip-user from default APPX package build (GH-105064) #105065