Parquet is what, 12 years old? Hardly cutting edge. What you say my well be true for polars (I'm not familiar with it), if/when it (or something else) does get packaged I'll give parquet another look ...
Python 3.10.12 (main, Nov 20 2023, 15:14:05) [GCC 11.4.0]
on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more
information.
>>> import pandas
>>> pandas.read_parquet('sample3.parquet')
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pandas/io/parquet.py",
line 493, in read_parquet
impl = get_engine(engine)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pandas/io/parquet.py",
line 53, in get_engine
raise ImportError(
ImportError: Unable to find a usable engine; tried using:
'pyarrow', 'fastparquet'.
A suitable version of pyarrow or fastparquet is required for
parquet support.https://github.com/hangxie/parquet-tools/blob/main/USAGE.md#...
FWIW i think i share your general aversion to _not_ using packages, just for the tidiness of installs and removals, though i'm on fedora and macos.