Wrote some notes on Aider's unconventional but kind of brilliant installation mechanism, which solves the "isolated Python virtual environment" problem by bundling uv as a dependency! https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/6/aider-using-uv-as-an-installer/

@simon That still requires you to `pip install` something in some environment, no? I feel like having a random installer with a dependency on `uv` in your (system?) python is not a good side-effect of this.

Better to have people install `pipx` and then use that to install your CLI tool. It's got the same "now pipx has to live in my global system directory" problem, but at least `pipx` is the *only* think you need there.

@simon The biggest problem I think people have and possibly will continue to have is "where do I get my Python". The system python is not a good thing to use for random stuff.

I haven't looked much into how `uv` handles installing and managing Python versions for you, but if it's halfway decent, then you probably don't want to abstract over that anyway, you want to tell people, "Install `uv` as a system package, then use it to install `aider`".