you should have no problem doing Python dev on nixos, it’s basically made for doing development environments like this without the need for containers. you should just be able to set up a nix shell for your project that contains python and all the necessary dependencies, and then enter the shell. then, you’ll have all the right dependencies installed for your project and still have access to any editors you have installed

Python is easy on NixOS, you just need to use python venvs and you can use pip like normal

(python -m venv .venv) to create the venv (only need to do once per project)

.venv/bin/activate to enable the venv (Vscode should do this automatically if you create the venv through the python extension)

Then just pip install to your heart’s content

(Probably a good idea to pip freeze > requirements.txt every time you install a new library too to make it reproducible

Also you should probably add the venv directory to gitignore if you’re using git as it’ll add a lot of crap to source control that can be easily regenerated from the requirements.txt

In my experience, you still have your same path to your nix installed binaries in the distribox container, so you shouldnt even have to duplicate your configuration. I also dont suspect python dev to be that bad so long as you use venv or conda.

Use Nix expressions or flakes for that - just copy a simple example of default.nix or shell.nix from a git host and tweak it to your liking. Personally, I am not a fan of how Nix handles Python, and still can’t get used to how Python packages have to be included in expressions, so I create a temporary virtual environment for the time-being.

Neovim is not a CLI editor, it is a TUI editor. If you want a CLI editor, use ed or ex.