How do I pass in calculated values to a list sort key?

Numba Support: How do I do ...?
1

I am trying to sort a list using a custom key within a numba-jit function in Python. Simple custom keys work, for example I know that I can just sort by the absolute value using something like this:

import numba

@numba.jit(nopython=True)
def myfunc():
    mylist = [-4, 6, 2, 0, -1]
    mylist.sort(key=lambda x: abs(x))
    return mylist  # [0, -1, 2, -4, 6]

However, in the following more complicated example, I get an error that I do not understand.

import numba
import numpy as np


@numba.jit(nopython=True)
def dist_from_mean(val, mu):
    return abs(val - mu)

@numba.jit(nopython=True)
def func():
    l = [1,7,3,9,10,-4,-2,0]
    avg_val = np.array(l).mean()
    l.sort(key=lambda x: dist_from_mean(x, mu=avg_val))
    return l

The error that it is reporting is the following:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "testitout.py", line 18, in <module>
    ret = func()
  File "/.../python3.6/site-packages/numba/core/dispatcher.py", line 415, in _compile_for_args
    error_rewrite(e, 'typing')
  File "/.../python3.6/site-packages/numba/core/dispatcher.py", line 358, in error_rewrite
    reraise(type(e), e, None)
  File "/.../python3.6/site-packages/numba/core/utils.py", line 80, in reraise
    raise value.with_traceback(tb)
numba.core.errors.TypingError: Failed in nopython mode pipeline (step: convert make_function into JIT functions)
Cannot capture the non-constant value associated with variable 'avg_val' in a function that will escape.

File "testitout.py", line 14:
def func():
    <source elided>
    l.sort(key=lambda x: dist_from_mean(x, mu=avg_val))
                                                ^

What is the appropriate way to pass in an outside value to a list sort in this case?