[umvi]

I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed which is also rolling release, and the one thing that bugs me is that sometimes your tools are so cutting edge that it makes it hard to get older stuff. For example it's super easy to get python 3.10 working in Tumbleweed but super hard to get python 3.6 working.

I needed specifically Python 3.6 to test something, and man that was hard to get working in Tumbleweed. First of all, it is not available in standard repos or pre-built on python's website. Second of all, downloading 3.6 source and building it fails because (apparently) the GCC version I have is too new and creates problems with the `-O3` flag passed during building. So now I have to install an older version of GCC that plays nice with python 3.6 source code...

Eventually I just said "screw it" and used the docker python:3.6 image. Not quite as convenient as having a native python3.6, but "good enough". Not sure what I would do if that image became unavailable.

[int_19h]

That's exactly the kind of stuff that https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv is meant to handle.

[umvi]

I started down that route as well but was running into the same gcc issues as when compiling manually. I found this issue https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv/issues/2046 but the workaround didn't immediately work for me and I didn't dig any deeper.

[tmtvl]

I've also been using TW for a while now (6 or so years) and I've taken to using GNU Guix as an environment manager when I need a specific version of some software.