Unreasonable dependency on really old dm-control

[joaospinto]

Hi. See the error below:

The conflict is caused by: The user requested dm-control>=1.0.19 dm-acme[envs,jax,tf] 0.4.0 depends on dm-control==0.0.364896371

You'll easily reproduce this with a two-line requirements.txt file.

I have to confess I'm pretty underwhelmed with the quality of the Python packaging of the libraries coming out of DeepMind. Writing all this software, open-sourcing it, to only make it impossible for consumers to integrate it is... illogical.

[AryanVBW]

You're correct that the pinned dm-control==0.0.364896371 version is very old and causes conflicts with modern projects.

Workaround: Install dm-control separately after Acme:

# Install Acme first (without envs extra to skip dm-control)
pip install dm-acme[jax,tf]

# Then install newer dm-control
pip install dm-control>=1.0.0 --upgrade

Or use --no-deps and manage dependencies manually:

pip install dm-acme --no-deps
pip install dm-control>=1.0.0
# Then install other required deps...

Root cause: The setup.py in Acme pins exact versions for reproducibility but hasn't been updated to support newer releases. This is a common pain point noted in several issues (#317, #321).

Note: This may cause compatibility issues if Acme relies on specific dm-control behavior. Test thoroughly after upgrading.