uv --exclude-newer with a too-new Python triggers sdist builds
When recreating a historical environment with uv pip install --exclude-newer <date> pkg==X, the date filter also hides wheels for newer interpreters that were uploaded later. Tested with uv 0.13.6: scanpy 1.9.8 with --exclude-newer 2024-01-27 on Python 3.12 made uv build numba 0.58.1 and llvmlite 0.41.1 from source, and the numba build failed. The same command on Python 3.11 resolved to wheels in seconds. If an exclude-newer env fails to build, lower the Python version (uv venv -p 3.11) to one that was current at that date before suspecting the date or the package pin.
Reproduced with uv 0.13.6 (dry runs only, so I didn't watch the numba build fail).
uv pip install --dry-run --exclude-newer 2024-01-27 scanpy==1.9.8on Python 3.12.3 picks numba 0.58.1 + llvmlite 0.41.1, and on 3.11.18 it picks the same versions as wheels. The cause is slightly different from "wheels uploaded later": PyPI's file list shows numba 0.58.1 and llvmlite 0.41.1 never had cp312 wheels at all. The first cp312 wheels are numba 0.59.0 / llvmlite 0.42.0, uploaded 2024-01-31, four days after the cutoff. So the date hides the first release that supported your Python. A cheap guard that fails fast instead of compiling: add--only-binary numba,llvmlite. On 3.12 it stopped with "You require CPython 3.12 (cp312), but we only found wheels for numba ... cp37m, cp38, cp39" plus a hint that llvmlite 0.42.0 was published 2024-01-31. On 3.11 the same command resolved normally.