How likely is this to be another npm/yarn situation? I have used a number of Python tools that in the long run turned out to be less portable and less usable than plain Pip and virtualenv. I do use pyenv for a personal setup but not for any production use.

You can use uv and get the benefits today: it combines the functionality from several tools (including pyenv) and the performance is such that it is transformative.

So it is in fact a yarn/npm situation: an alternative tool that does too many things and aims to replace a bunch of other tools.

I read the same sentiment about poetry a few years ago. Turns out tools that do one thing well are better in the long run.

as if it was so simple. don't forget about pnpm.

it's the same for uv/pip/poetry except uv is so much better than the alternatives there isn't any contest. pip is the safe default (which doesn't even work out of the box on debian derivatives, which is half the issue) and uv is... just default.

As a Debian user that wanted to use a cli tool only available from npm it was horrible trying to find some sane instructions that didn't assume intimate knowledge of node package structures.

I did eventually figure out I could just do `corepack pnpm setup` then install packages globally with pnpm.