Along with a pip (and now packaging) maintainer, Damian Shaw, I have been working on making packaging, the library behind almost all packaging related tools, faster at reading versions and specifiers, something tools like pip have to do thousands of times during resolution. Using Python 3.15’s new statistical profiler and metadata from every package ever uploaded to PyPI, I measured and improved core Packaging constructs while keeping the code readable and simple. Reading in Versions can be up t...