uv

uv is a modern Python package installer designed to be a drop-in replacement for pip and pip-tools. Written in Rust, it is incredibly fast and aims to provide a single, cohesive tool for Python dependency management. It is developed by Astral, the same company behind the Ruff linter.

Info

uv’s key innovation is its high-performance, parallel dependency resolver. This allows it to resolve and install packages significantly faster than traditional tools like pip, especially in complex projects.

Core Philosophy

• Performance: Be the fastest Python package manager available. uv uses a custom resolver written in Rust and leverages parallelism and caching to achieve its speed.
• Cohesion: Provide a single tool that handles installing, resolving, and managing virtual environments.
• Drop-in Replacement: Act as a direct replacement for common pip, pip-tools, and venv workflows.

Key Features

• Blazing Fast: Orders of magnitude faster than pip and pip-compile.
• Dependency Resolution: Compiles requirements.in to requirements.txt files, similar to pip-tools.
• Virtual Environment Management: Includes a built-in tool for creating and managing Python virtual environments, like venv.
• Caching: Uses a global cache to avoid re-downloading packages.

Common Commands

uv provides a single executable (uv) with intuitive subcommands.

# Create a virtual environment
uv venv
 
# Activate the virtual environment (syntax depends on your shell)
source .venv/bin/activate
 
# Install packages from a requirements.txt file
uv pip install -r requirements.txt
 
# Install a specific package
uv pip install <package_name>
 
# Compile a requirements.in to requirements.txt
uv pip compile requirements.in -o requirements.txt
 
# Sync the virtual environment with a requirements file
uv pip sync requirements.txt

uv is a game-changer for Python development, drastically reducing the time spent waiting for dependencies to install or resolve. Its speed and unified feature set make it a powerful companion to other modern Python tools like Ruff.