[spott]

Part of the problem is that nix takes an opposite stance from where python seems to be heading…

Poetry, pipenv, etc are all about building dependency tree solvers into python package management.. so if you have package a that depends on package c >= 2.0 and package b that depends on package c < 2.5, you will get package c installed in version 2.5…

Nix basically says “Python packages are lying when they say they need this specific package version. Ignore that and install whatever version is in nixpkgs”.

Which sucks! There are some badly maintained workarounds (poetry2nix and pip2nix come to mind… neither of which works for m1 macs), but the whole stance is just wrong.

[syntheweave]

I believe, having recently installed Python libraries on it, that Debian stable has the best handle on what to do to produce defaults that a mere mortal can debug: Either use what's vendored in apt, or use venv and pip for your project's additional dependencies. Pip has been configured to be venv-only, which is good for the needs of Debian's maintainers, and clarifies what your project has to be responsible for. So, while I haven't needed it yet, I have some confidence that I can get to a reproducible dev environment with the appropriate version of whatever's needed, even if the resolution process is imperfectly automated.