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Do you have to figure this out? Sure, it's nice and "pure" if everything is configured through Nix but there is something to be said about being pragmatic. Personally, I just enabled nix-ld[0] and use uv to install and handle my Python versions and package dependencies. Much, much easier.

[0]: https://mynixos.com/nixpkgs/option/programs.nix-ld.enable

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Easier and largely compatible with the rest of the world. Solving problems with "If we all switched to NixOS..." is a non-starter in most organizations.

My rule of thumb: keep a strict separation between my projects (which change constantly) and my operating system (which I set up once and periodically update). Any hard nix dependency inside the project is a failure of abstraction IMO. Collaborating with people on other operating systems isn't optional!

In practice this means using language-specific package management (uv, cargo, etc) and ignoring the nix way.

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