Why is this a problem? The ecosystem has developed usable interoperable standards (for example, fundamentally uv manages isolated environments by using the same kind of virtual environment created by the standard library — because that's the only kind that Python cares about; the key component is the `pyvenv.cfg` file, and Python is hard-coded to look for and use that); and you don't have to learn or use more than one.
There are competing options because people have different ideas about what a "package manager" should or shouldn't be responsible for, and about the expectations for those tasks.
It’s definitely an issue for learning the language. Obviously after working with python a bit that doesn’t matter, but fragmentation still makes it more of a hassle to get open source projects up and running if they don’t use something close to your usual package management approach.
No, the same uv that people have been regularly (https://hn.algolia.com/?q=uv) posting about on HN since its first public releases in February of 2024 (see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39387641).
> How many are there now?
Why is this a problem? The ecosystem has developed usable interoperable standards (for example, fundamentally uv manages isolated environments by using the same kind of virtual environment created by the standard library — because that's the only kind that Python cares about; the key component is the `pyvenv.cfg` file, and Python is hard-coded to look for and use that); and you don't have to learn or use more than one.
There are competing options because people have different ideas about what a "package manager" should or shouldn't be responsible for, and about the expectations for those tasks.