[hglaser]

Am I the only one who feels like this is obviated by Docker?

uv is a clear improvement over pip and venv, for sure.

But I do everything in dev containers these days. Very few things get to install on my laptop itself outside a container. I've gotten so used to this that tools that uninstall/install packages on my box on the fly give me the heebie-jeebies.

[czbond]

> I do everything in dev containers these days. Very few things get to install on my laptop itself outside a container.

Yes, it was the NPM supply chain issues that really forced this one me. Now I install, fetch, build in an interactive Docker container

[NumberCruncher]

> Am I the only one who feels like this is obviated by Docker?

This whole discussion has the same vibes like digital photography 15 years ago. Back then some people spent more time on discussing the tech spec their cameras than takin photos. Now some people spend more time on discussing the pros and cons of different Python environment management solutions than building real things.

The last time I had to touch one of my dockerized environments was when Miniconda and Miniforge were merged. I said the agent "fix the dockerfile", and the third attempt worked. Another time, one dependency was updated and I had to switch to Poetry. Once again, I said the agent "refactor the repository to Poetry" and it worked. Maybe because all my Python package versions are frozen and I only update them when they break or when I need the functionality of the new version.

Whenever this topic pops up in real life, I always ask back what was the longest time they managed the same Python service in the cloud. In the most cases, the answer is never. The last time someone said one year. After a while this service was turned into two .py files.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just too far away from FAANG level sorcery. Everything is a hammer if all you have to deal with are nails.

[zahlman]

Lots of people are doing things where they would prefer not to invoke the weight of an entire container.

[collinmanderson]

uv can be used to speed up building containers.