Question about caching across environment versions

[joaospinto]

Hi Prefix Team,

Say I have a large Python repository with frequently changing package dependencies, and I want to make it as easy as possible to change that environment (i.e. avoiding as many file copies as possible, etc).

Ideally, this would be supported by maintaining a shared cache containing all package versions ever used by previous environments (potentially modulo some retention policy), and only a minimal amount of work (e.g. nothing more than setting up some symlinks) would be required when creating a new environment version (plus obviously running dependency resolution).

I was wondering whether Pixi (or any other dependency manager) currently achieves this; if not, why, and what would it take to get there?

Thank you in advance for your time.