[setopt]

My guess is that the difference is more that PyPI intends to be a Python package repository, and thus I don’t think you can just upload say a binary copy of MKL without accompanying Python code. It’s originally a source-based repository with binary wheels being an afterthought. (I still remember the pre-wheel nightmare `pip install numpy` used to give, when it required compiling the C/C++/Fortran pieces which often failed and was often hard to debug…)

But Anaconda and CondaForge are general package repository, they are not Python-specific but are happy to be used for R, Julia, C/C++/Fortran binaries, etc. it’s primarily a binary-based repository. For example, you can `conda install python` but you can’t `pip install python`.

I don’t know if there is any technical barrier or just a philosophical barrier. Clearly, Pip handles binary blobs inside of Python packages fine, so I would guess the latter but am happy to be corrected :).

[kzrdude]

Well, uv itself is just a binary wheel, with source distribution available of course. Uv uses basically no python, it's pure Rust and is still distributed using PyPI.