That’s a good point! However, there’s still things Python could do to help make the experience better. The package I was using had multiple artifacts per versi

That’s a good point! However, there’s still things Python could do to help make the experience better. The package I was using had multiple artifacts per version, including the raw zipped source code and wheels for each ABI they built for. It’s certainly convenient that the most applicable one for your current system is pulled automatically by pip. But in this case that’s not the behavior I wanted, and I could not successfully get pex or pip to download a “less optimal” artifact. You can blame C++, but if Python is already papering over deficiencies it’s not unreasonable to expect improvements that aren’t fundamentally impossible. It should definitely be possible for there to be one easily understood argument to specify which artifact pip should download. In my (potentially flawed) experience, figuring out which ABI value to pass was already not straightforward. Even then, the arguments for selecting an ABI or even asking for the raw source instead of a wheel weren’t seeming to have an effect.