Looks like simonw found the thread before I decided to post it, though (https://discuss.python.org/t/use-of-pypi-as-a-generic-storag...). I'm inclined to agree with that take generally; it seems that the uv-driven model of "hard-link an executable into a virtual environment" (so it has a consistent relative path but an arbitrary prefix, and hard-linking from a cache avoids redundant copies) solves a lot of problems that Linux package managers have been struggling with. (I could even imagine an entire distribution patterned after this, although it would require some cooperation from packagers.)