uv Python Tool
Discussions center on uv, a fast and comprehensive Python tool for dependency management, virtual environments, and runtimes, praised as a replacement for pip, pipenv, poetry, pyenv, and conda, with comparisons of its speed, usability, and workflows.
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It seemed pipenv is more than sufficient, why should I use uv?
That looks pretty awesome. What are the drawbacks to using uv? Does it get along with existing pip and conda installations?
Almost certainly only the install. Uv is basically a pip tool substitute with a few other bells and whistles too but shouldn't affect run time whatsoever.
uv is not just a dependency tool. uv deals well with packages and dependency management (well), venvs, runtimes, and tools. It replaces all the other tools and works better in just about every way.
uv for Python is a game changer, better than anything else out there and solves a lot of the core problems with pip/venv/poetry/pyenv (the list goes on).
This. I was researching uv to replace my pipenv+pyenv setup, but after reading up a bit I decided to just give up. Pipenv is just straightforward and “just works”. Aside from being slow, not much is wrong with it. I’m not in the mood to start configuring uv, a tool that should take me 2 minutes and a “uv —-help” to learn.
For me the biggest value of uv was replacing pyenv for managing multiple versions of python. So uv replaced pyenv+pyenv-virtualenv+pip
uv provides a breadth of functionality that no single tool has before, and that no simple, easy combination of tools has before. For developers, it replaces poetry with something much faster and more reliable, and replaces pipenv. For end users, it replaces pipx and pyenv, and pretty much replaces pip itself (which no longer wants to be used by end users). And most importantly, uv relieves you of having to remember which of the preceding tools are suitable for which use cases.
I’ve been trying uv lately to replace my normal workflow of selecting a python with pyenv for the shell, then making a venv, then installing a bunch of default packages (pandas, Jupyter, etc). So far the only benefit is that I can use just the one tool for what used to take 3 (pyenv, venv, pip). I don’t _hate_ it…but it really isn’t much of an improvement.
uv has a lot more perks! It makes distributing python tooling easier too