Per PEP 440, a version specifier must contain a comparison operator (i.e. >, ==, etc). Connect expects a PEP-440 compliant version specifier for the environment.python.requires manifest property.

A few options that I see:

1. Ensure that .python-version is a valid version specifier; otherwise, skip.
2. Modify the version that we get from .python-version to make it a compliant version specifier (i.e. prepend ==)
3. Do not use .python-version at all 🤷

I'm fine with any of these, but here's my 2 cents:

Given that .python-version appears to be pretty bespoke for uv and can contain a wide variety of non-version-specifier values (see https://docs.astral.sh/uv/concepts/python-versions/#requesting-a-version), then I'd vote to drop the precedence of .python-version below pyproject.toml and setup.cfg, and then (1) skip if not a valid version specifier.

@amol- What do you think?