> There's a reason I picked numpy/scipy as examples. Among popular Python packages, they're among the genuinely hardest to build from source.
For context, I wrote my comment with awareness of the level of complexity that exists.
> Or, to put it another way, is it possible that people who leave drive-by "helpful" "suggestions" in comment threads about package repositories vastly underestimate what they're asking for, and often don't even really understand the problem domain?
You're right! It's absolutely possible that driveby snarky suggestions are not helpful in any way! It's also perhaps possible that there is a point to be made and perhaps a nasty-but-avoidable failure scenario.
There is, after all, a distinction to be made between problems that are complex and problems that are unsolvable. The general-purpose problem of building packages is, as you say, incredibly complex and difficult. It's worth considering that it might not be unsolvable. After all, every single package in PyPI got built somehow.
Which is to say one doesn't set out to bolt a build system onto a package repo system. One bolts a repo system onto a build system, because then it's an (easier) versioning and binary blob distribution problem when you have a reliable chain of trust.