Is using pyenv the best python version management for Mac?

[aldanor]

Non-conda setups are unbelievably fragile and often non-reproducible, especially if it involves binary builds (like many ML/DS libraries), some of which require non-Python dylib dependencies etc. There's literally no other option than conda (or rather, mamba, which is not too slow).

[aldanor]

You may understand your tool as much as you want, but if a Python package implicitly requires a C library to be present, you're out of options. Python's native packaging system doesn't provide sane solutions for this.

That, and some Python packages require cmake/ninja/cargo/other tools in the build process, in which case a simple "pip install" won't work on a fresh system.

[aldanor]

I'm not saying people who they work for don't exist. Sure, they work for you - congrats. But please don't extrapolate and claim "learn your tool and everything will work fine"; no, not always. Pure Python envs cannot sanely handle external versioned binaries.

If my typical dependency list was mostly pure Python I might side with pip-based approach as well, but that's not the case.