I’ve always been under the impression that the ‘flexibility’ side of the ‘complexity+flexibility’ double-edged sword of Python packaging has been one of the reasons that Python has been able to rise as far as it has, popularity-wise.
You can package darn near anything in Python, even though it may take figuring out a complicated three-step-and-a-hop process to get there… and I suspect that this has been part of what’s enabled Python to grow into its “second best programming language for every task” aphorism.
I understand the urge to move toward simplicity, and I completely agree that examining the packaging ecosystem for sharp edges and pain points that can be resolved is an important endeavor. But, I do have some concern about possibly going too far, and accidentally removing an important and hard-to-specify … “meta-feature”, I suppose … of Python packaging.