There are still people who use machine wide python installs instead of environments? Python dependency hell was already bad years ago, but today it's completely impractical to do it this way. Even on raspberries.

Debian pretty much "solved" this by making pip refuse to install packages if you are not in an venv.

It needed distro buy in and implementation, but this is from the Python side: https://peps.python.org/pep-0668/

IIRC that's actually a change in upstream pip.

Ditto OpenSUSE, at least on Tumbleweed

Well, with my python 3.13.5 not even that works!

Pretty impressive but this seems to be a staple of most AI/ML projects.

"Works on my machine" or "just use docker", although here the later doesn't even seem to be an option.

Using venv won't save you from having the wrong version of the actual Python interpreter installed.

Yep. Python stopped being Python a decade ago. Now there are just innumberable Pythons. Perl... on the otherhand, you can still run any perl script from any time on any system perl interpreter and it works! Granted, perl is unpopular and not getting constant new features re: hardcore math/computation libs.

Anyway, I think I'll stick with Festival 1.96 for TTS. It's super fast even on my core2duo and I have exactly zero chance of getting this Python 3'ish script to run on any machine with an OS older than a handful of years.

It breaks my heart that Perl fell out of favor. Perl “6” didn’t help in the slightest.