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Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

emily.space

51–60 of 1001 posts

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#51

curl|sh and iwr|iex chills my spine, no one should recommend these methods of installation in 2025. I'm against closed computers but I'm also against reckless install. Even without the security concerns these way of installation tends to put files in a whole random places making it hard to manage and cleanup.

Installing an out-of-distro deb/rpm/msi/dmg/etc package is just as unsafe as curl|sh. Or even unsafer, as packages tend to require root/admin.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#53
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as impact on the ecosystem I’d say uv is up there. For the language itself you are right. Curious if you’ve come across any real use cases for Gil-less python. I haven’t yet. Seems like everything that would benefit from it is already written in highly optimized native modules.

I second and third this. I HATE python but uv was what made it usable to me. No other language had such a confusing obnoxious setup to do anything with outside of js land. uv made it sane for me.

Node definitely needs its own "uv" basically.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#54

I'm surprised by how much I prefer prepending "uv" to everything instead of activating environments - which is still naturally an option if that's what floats your boat. I also like how you can manage Python versions very easily with it. Everything feels very "batteries-included" and yet local to the project. I still haven't used it long enough to tell whether it avoids the inevitable bi-yearly "debug a Python enviro…

Personally, I prefer prepending `uv` to my commands because they're more stateless that way. I don't need to remember which terminal my environment is sourced in, and when copying and pasting commands to people I don't need to worry about what state their terminal is it. It just works.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#56

I find the python tooling so confusing now. There’s pip, virtualenv, pipx, uv, probably half a dozen others I’m missing. I like node, npm isolates by default, npx is easy to understand, and the ecosystem is much less fragmented. I see a python app on GitHub and they’re all listing different package management tools. Reminds me of that competing standards xkcd.

well there's npm, pnpm, yarn, bun package managers

not a python developer, so not sure it's equivalent as the npm registry is shared between all.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#57
post #6

As someone who generally prefers not to use python in a production context (I think it's excellent for one-off scripts or cron jobs that require more features then what bash provides), I agree with this sentiment. I recently wrote some python (using uv) and found it to be pleasant and well-integrated with a variety of LSPs.

[deleted]

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#58
I hadn't paid any attention to rust before uv, but since starting to use uv, I've switched a lot of my performance-sensitive code dev to rust (with interfaces to python). These sorts of improvements really do improve my quality of life significantly.

My hope is that conda goes away completely. I run an ML cluster and we have multi-gigabyte conda directories and researchers who can't reproduce anything because just touching an env breaks the world.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#59

curl|sh and iwr|iex chills my spine, no one should recommend these methods of installation in 2025. I'm against closed computers but I'm also against reckless install. Even without the security concerns these way of installation tends to put files in a whole random places making it hard to manage and cleanup.

Maybe there will be a .deb one day

That doesn't fix the core issue. You can put anything inside a .deb file, even preinstall script can send your ~/.aws/credentials to China. The core concern is getting a package that's verified by a volunteer human to not contain anything malicious, and then getting that package into Debian repository or equivalent.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#60

The best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem would be something that unites pip and conda. Conda is not going anywhere given how many packages depend on non-python binaries, especially in enterprise settings.

I had this discussion briefly with a buddy who uses python exclusively for his career in austronomy. He was lamenting the pains of colaborting around Conda and seemed convinced it was irreplaceable. Being that I'm not familiar with the exact limitations Conda is providing for, Im curious if you could shed some insight here. Does nix not technically solve the issue? I understand this isn't solely a technical problem and Nix adoption in this space isn't likely, but I'm curious none-the-less!
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