I'm doing a bunch of AI stuff that needs compiling to try various unrelated apps. I'm making a mess of config files and extras. I've been using distrobox and conda. How could I do this better? Chroot? Different user logins for extra home directories? Groups? Most of the packages need access to CUDA and localhost. I would like to keep them out of my main home directory.
I use Gentoo where builds from source are supported by the package manager. ;)
Overall though, any containerisation option such as Docker / Podman or Singularity is what I would typically do to put things in boxes.
For semi-persistent envs a chroot is fine, and I have a nice Gentoo-specific chroot script that makes my life easier when reproing bugs or testing software.