Wrap around an external Python binary

[tjni]

At work, we distribute Python through a non-nix mechanism. Is there a way to set devenv up to use this external Python with all the rest of the Python configuration (such as poetry, uv, etc.)?

[domenkozar]

You could override src for the python derivation if the compilation step isn't different to upstream python and then set it to languages.python.package.

[tjni]

In my case, the Python binary is provided by a separate team via a process I don't have much say over. (As you can imagine, there are all sorts of details that make building from source complicated: besides the team separation I just mentioned, we also develop on aarch64-darwin but distribute an x64_64-darwin Python binary, probably due to prioritizing other things.) So I'm wondering to what extent everything is tied to the Python derivation (e.g. via passthru attributes).

[tjni]

I looked into this a little more and immediately ran into the classic question of how can one depend on a file that's not in the Nix store in a pure way. Do you know the latest thinking on this use case upstream?

[domenkozar]

It's going to be quite involved to support embedding binary python distributions. This should be doable in nixpkgs, if you need commercial support you can email [email protected] and we can look into it.