the immediate blocker when trying to run this Python project is that a native package deep within its dependency graph won't compile without gcc-12 even though gcc 15 was released in August last year

that's not even targeting gcc 14 which was released in 2024

and to hardcode this expectation without a Dockerfile or some Python-native mechanism to pull in a specific version of a C/Cxx compiler ...

https://xkcd.com/1987/

🐍 🤡