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by networked 587 days ago
With luck, `uv tool install` [1] will solve most of the frustrations with Python programs on Linux/Mac/Windows, since uv combines the functionality of pipx and pyenv and doesn't itself depend on Python. It is a single binary that manages Python interpreters and project environments. uv is very actively developed and seems to be rapidly gaining adoption. It makes me optimistic about its future (and, correspondingly, pessimistic about the future of Python tooling that competes with it).

I already have a success story of helping a friend install ArchiveBox [2] with uv. ArchiveBox required an older version of Python than their system had. The quickest and easiest solution I could think of was:

  pipx install uv
  uv tool install --python 3.8 archivebox
You could also install uv by other means.

[1] https://docs.astral.sh/uv/concepts/tools/

[2] https://archivebox.io/

2 comments

> imagine here the xkcd comic about standards

These tools come and go in the Python world... It's basically like JavaScript frameworks. It seems that people recommend a different one every month

Yes, just like this. Since 2015 when I started work professionally with python, after each year, a new project shows some kind of "messiah complex" around the python distributing software problem... They usually say in some part of the readme: "That time we will be saved! We have the right tool here that does this and that".

No, it's not solved! And probably will not be solved neither.

Obviously, things get better honestly, 2015 was far worst than now, but currently it's very far from perfect.

For instance, go static build are much superior. Or even Rust, with all the language issues, at least the tooling is good and the software distribution works great.

Yeah uv works great - that --python in your example can even be awkward pythons like pypy@3.10 (provided pypy works on your OS/arch combo)