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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

VMs are an easy copout to a problem that shouldn't be a problem in the first place.

That's not true. Python has C libraries, some might need to be built from source, and there's good reason to not allow root access on a lot of systems (and ability to install headers/dev packages, gcc, etc). System package management is hard and coordinating with (ubiqitous, not specific to Python) language package managers magnifies it. Unless you had some other solution in mind that I've missed...

We had the ability to run packages from a custom "root" prefix for ages in UNIX. If only package management tools all worked together, with the same central store, and respecting this...

There's never a need to mess with root access -- not even to install headers/dev packages. Dev tools and compilers can also be made to look to custom locations. I mean, there's never a need aside from self-imposed limitations our OSes and tooling places upon us.

Nothing inherently complex: just tons of accidental complexity.

Those things are only hard because we never did any coordinated effort to fix them.

conda basically proves that you can install almost everything one needs in the user's home directory. they have been working more and more on being completely independent from things like system compilers as well.

Conda is a great way to get gcc 7.2 on CentOS 6. Anaconda builds all of its packages targeting CentOS 6 for broad compatibility, but with the latest compilers to ensure we have the latest security features compiled in.

Goodness, you say that like it's a good thing. Yes, it is easy to download compiled binaries from a 3rd party.

I don't understand the nature of your discourse. You agreed that maintaining software distros is not easy, some recommended conda and you seem dismissive again?

This is not true, at least not without some sort of context around the work being performed and the requirements of the workflow.

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