logoalt Hacker News

pdonis • yesterday at 7:45 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

> packages that use uv-build for their backend should use a semver range

This wouldn't necessarily solve Gentoo's problem. The only way to be sure to solve Gentoo's problem would be for every Python project that uses uv-build to specify one particular version. Then Gentoo could be sure that once that release of that project was built once, it would never change.

In other words, for a distro like Gentoo, the build backend is a dependency, and if it changes, that triggers a change in the build, even if the build backend change would not actually change the final wheel that got built.


Replies

woodruffw • yesterday at 7:51 PM

That would appear to be the polar opposite of effective: that turns a global constraint problem (everybody needing to have or install a compatible build backend version) into a global coordination problem (everybody needing to have or install an exact version). I can imagine most of what causes problems for Gentoo is people trying to do the “right” thing of pinning an exact build backend version, which then invalidates whatever compatible build backend version they’ve picked.

It seems much easier to solve the problem of compatibility than the one of getting every open source maintainer to upgrade their build backend version (whether uv-build, or flit, or anything else) every Tuesday.

➕ show 2 replies