Discussing a breaking change in Python’s setuptools.
The really interesting part is in the discussion section… and it shows once more how incredibly well-designed the GNU Guix package manager is – which solves these problems very very well, for arbitrary languages and with a fast growing distribution of, by now, about 50,000 packages.
“I use Nix, btw”
Yes, Nix solves the same problem. The main difference is that the language used for package descriptions is less attractive to some developers compared to the language which Guix uses, which is Guile Scheme. Guile is very mature, well documented and has good performance.
I think that will give Guix an advantage in the long run, since for a successful disyribution, one needs a bunch of packages and for this, volunteers need to write package definitions and maintain them. Guix makes it easier to write definitions.
Clearly the strict focus on FLOSS will prevent some packages like NVidia drivers from appearing there. But on the other hand, this gives you a system which you will be able to completely compile from source in 10 years time.