Switching from PIP to UV
For the past 10 years I have constantly depended on python tools such as conda, pip, virtualenv, pyenv and poetry. These tools always made it difficult to master python tooling as I had to remember the CLI commands for each one of them separately.
In mid 2024, I came across a new tool called UV via an youtube suggestion. The developers built it on Rust, and back then I was very mesmerized by rust. But I did not feel comfortable switching my python workflows to UV right away.
Fast forward a year, the latest version of UV made it a complete no-brainer and I have decided to switch over.
To start a new project I let uv create the required boilerplate for me by using the init command.
1
uv init myproject --python 3.12.5 && cat pyproject.toml
The above command declares also the required python version by using the --python argument. To inspect everything is correct, I check the content of pyproject.toml
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
[project]
name = "myproject"
version = "0.1.0"
description = "Add your description here"
readme = "README.md"
requires-python = ">=3.12.5"
dependencies = []
I never liked how poetry or pyenv by default separated my repository and the virtual environments to different location. This is also possible in UV but not as a default. I like that all my project dependencies are in the project folder. I also no longer need to bother setting up a virtual environment. By adding the below command, uv can create a .venv environment automatically.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
uv add requests
╰─❯
Using CPython 3.12.5
Creating virtual environment at: .venv
Resolved 6 packages in 347ms
Installed 5 packages in 5ms
+ certifi==2025.1.31
+ charset-normalizer==3.4.1
+ idna==3.10
+ requests==2.32.3
+ urllib3==2.3.0
Finally, to run a python script, I no longer need any alias or call python myself. uv runcommand does all that for me. It chooses the virtual environment and python version in the project folder and runs the script.
1
2
uv run hello.py
╰─❯ Hello from myproject!
Another great feature is the ability to use ruff tool to lint check and format my scripts in seconds!
1
2
uvx ruff check .
╰─❯ All checks passed!
1
2
uvx ruff format .
╰─❯ 1 file left unchanged
Did I fail to mention all the above commands runs extremely fast when compared to the older python tools? It is fast alright! This gives developers more time to focus on their code base rather than fiddle around with multiple tools just to execute their python scripts.
Kudos to the entire team at Astral. I hope that this open-source project continues being open and does not follow the Redis way!
There are many more commands to explore in uv and uvx from UV Cli Commands.
Resources
Here are some of the video resources which helped me learn the basic commands in UV and uvx, in no specific order.
- Feature review from Tim
- Soft introduction to UV by Arjan
- Soft introduction to UV by Ian