Ref. to "package managers install files in system locations" - this is not clear if this is supposed to be a feature of package managers in general or the Python ones. For example, NuGet package manager installs global packages in %userprofile%\.nuget\packages under Windows which is clearly a user location.

Alexei‭ I was thinking of apt and brew, not Nuget. This is because the linked page calls them out as examples. AFAIK nuget is basically the pip of C#, which is probably why pipx docs don't use it as an example.

Anyways, I was hoping that the question does not require you to guess what I understand by "package manager". That is why I clarified by mentioning the installation of system files. Perhaps I should have also said "in arbitrary locations", because actually even pip can install in system locations, but only in a specific place (the site-packages paths) as opposed to how apt for example can put files anywhere like /etc or /boot.

deleted user But look what we get if we follow your logic: pip, pipx, apt, brew, cargo (and probably Julia, which I don't know) can all install packages in system locations. Then saying that "pipx is like apt or brew because it installs packages" makes no sense, because pip does that too. So why would you have a third party package for something that is done by a builtin feature of the language?

Clearly, your reading must be incorrect. There must be at least two kinds of package managers: The OS package managers like brew and apt, which install files in arbitrary system locations, and the language package managers like pip, cargo and nuget, which are limited as to what locations they install in (see prev. comment). So by this, I conclude that perhaps you have missed this nuance in this question, even though the question makes no sense without that nuance.

Of course now we must ask why pipx claims to be the first kind when it appears to be like the second. Hence, the question.