@joerick it just occurred to me — what if cibuildwheel would take the user-provided $PIP_CONSTRAINT, then create the following file:

-c user-provided-constraints.txt
-c cibuildwheel-provided-constraints.txt

perhaps, removing entries from cibuildwheel-provided-constraints.txt that are defined in the user-provided-constraints.

As an alternative, cibuildwheel could write (of symlink?) its selected constraints file for the current session to a predictable location on each invocation, letting the end-users include it into their constraints via -c.

Would that be usable or would it make things more problematic?

what if cibuildwheel would take the user-provided $PIP_CONSTRAINT, then create the following file:

That would have the same behaviour as this PR. In this PR, the users' constraints are concat'd with our constraints.

perhaps, removing entries from cibuildwheel-provided-constraints.txt that are defined in the user-provided-constraints.

Since #1725, I hope there isn't a big problem with conflicts. I'd rather see how this plays out before adding more complexity to how we handle this particular problem.

It's worth noting that the 'removing duplicate entries' idea is good but isn't foolproof, because each of the packages also have their own requirements specifiers that could conflict with what's set in the constraints. I'd rather just tell the minority of users that have conflicts to use DEPENDENCY_VERSIONS=latest and they can pin pip, build, delocate, auditwheel themselves, if it's important to them.

@henryiii or @mayeut, a review here would be great. I'd like to get some of these PRs merged if we can, they've been hanging around for a while.

It's worth noting that the 'removing duplicate entries' idea is good but isn't foolproof, because each of the packages also have their own requirements specifiers that could conflict with what's set in the constraints. I'd rather just tell the minority of users that have conflicts to use DEPENDENCY_VERSIONS=latest and they can pin pip, build, delocate, auditwheel themselves, if it's important to them.

True, I also realized this later on, after posting that comment ;)

ready for another review henryiii