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Excerpts from Sean Dague's message of 2015-04-15 06:50:11 -0700:
> == End game?
> 
> *If* pip install took into account the requirements of everything
> already installed like apt or yum does, and resolve accordingly
> (including saying that's not possible unless you uninstall or upgrade
> X), we'd be able to pip install and get a working answer at the end. Maybe?
> 
> Honestly, there are so many fixes on fixes here to our system, I'm not
> sure even this would fix it.
> 

This also carries a new problem: co-installability. If you get deep into
Debian policy, you'll find that many of the policies that make the least
sense are there to preserve co-installability. For instance, Node.js
caused a stir a while back because they use '/usr/bin/node' for their
interpreter. There was already an X.25 packet-radio-thing that used that
binary and was called node, and so the node.js maintainers simply said
"Conflicts: node". This causes problem though, as now you can't have an
X.25 packet-radio-thing that also uses node.js.

Right now users can go ahead and violate some stated requirements after
they've run tests and verified whatever reason the conflict is present
doesn't affect them, by simply ordering their requirements. It's not
awesome, but it _does_ work. Without that, pypi suddenly is sectioned
off into islands the moment a popular library narrows its requirements.