+++
date = Date(2020, 7, 27)
tags = ["gsoc", "pip"]
+++

# Fifth Check-In

Hello and I hope y'all are still doing well!

## What did I do last week?

I was not really productive last week—most of the following tickets are fillers
to make use of the spare cycles I had when I was still trying to figure out
the way to implement the main work.

* Finalize the `--use-feature=fast-deps` flag ({{pip 8588}})
* Improve mocking of environment variables in the test suit ({{pip 8614}})
* Finalize the fix for verbose/quiet options specified via
  configuration files and environment variables ({{pip 8578}})
* Clean up a tiny bit in the resolver internal API ({{pip 8629}})
* Start working on seperating the download of wheels
  from dependency resolution ({{pip 8638}})

## Did I get stuck anywhere?

I'm struggling on refactoring the code to support separate download.
`pip`'s codebase was not intended for this and thus there are
many execution paths and other details entangled around the relevant area.

## What is coming up next?

`pip` 20.2 is going to be released within the next few days with
`--use-feature=fast-deps` included and I'm mentally prepare to fix
any undiscovered problem.  At the same time, I will continue working
on {{pip 8638}} and hopefully get it done soon enough to begin drafting
download parallelization strategies, mostly with the UI.