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

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

#751

Post by dochne »

matsemann wrote: post #722
BrenBarn wrote: post #659

The sticking point for me is the way tools like uv and poetry build everything around the idea of a "project". I don't want a separate environment for every project, and I don't want to start by creating a project. I want to start with an environment that has stuff in it, and I start fiddling around, and gradually something comes together that eventually will be pulled out into a separate project. From what I can see…

What you describe I think is what most other people hate the most about python. The fact that everything pollutes the global environment, which then becomes a mess of things depending on various versions, which also ends up breaking tools included in the OS and suddenly your whole system is effed.

I've never quite forgiven python for the time I tried to update it using yum, it failed which is then broke yum - not a fun place to end up.

Treating python as a project level dependency rather than a system level dependency is just an excellent design choice.

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

#752

Post by kombine »

prpl wrote: post #495
gostsamo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I get it, conda is still around because uv is focused on python while conda handles things written in other languages. Unless uv gets much more universal than expected, conda is here to stay.

conda (and its derivatives that are also “conda” now), and conda-forge specifically, are the best ways to install things that will work across operating systems, architectures, and languages - without having to resort to compiling everything. Want to make sure a software stack works well on a Cray with MPI+cuda+MKL, macOS, and ARM linux, with both C++ and Python libraries? It’s possible with conda-forge.

For me the best way to install things across operating systems has been nix. I wish it was more popular in the ML community.

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

#753

Post by PeterStuer »

teiferer wrote: post #686
ederamen wrote: post #517

Uv is so good. I'm a curmudgeon about adopting new tooling, and tried uv with a lot of skepticism, but it was just better in every way. And even if it wasn't so polished and reliable, the raw speed makes it hard to go back to any other tool. Uv combined with type hints reaching critical mass in the Python ecosystem, and how solid PyLance is in VSCode, feels so good it has made me consider investing in Python as my pr…

> But then I remember that Python is dog slow compared to other languages with comparable ergonomics and first-class support for static typing, and...idk it's a tough sell. Case in point: uv itself is not written in Python. It's a Rust tool. It always amazes me when people work on an ecosystem for a language but then don't buy enough into that to actually use it to do the work. Avoidance of dogfooding is a big red fl…

Different tools for different use cases.

Would you write an assembler IDE in assembler?

I use Python for >90% of my code these days. I love uv for its ux and speed. I 0% care it wasn't written in Python. In fact, making it fully independent of any existing Python environment is a plus for the Python user. No weird bootstrap problems.

It does not make me switch to Rust for my own code.

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

#754

Post by mdavid626 »

kyt wrote: post #21

I must be the odd man out but I am not a fan of uv. 1. It tries to do too many things. Please just do one thing and do it well. It's simultaneously trying to replace pip, pyenv, virtualenv, and ruff in one command. 2. You end up needing to use `uv pip` so it's not even a full replacement for pip. 3. It does not play well with Docker. 4. It adds more complexity. You end up needing to understand all of these new enviro…

We use it for many projects. None of these are true for us.

Why do you need to use uv pip?

What problems you have in Docker?

I don't understand any of those env variables you listed, yet I use uv without problems.

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

#755

Post by zelphirkalt »

jampekka wrote: post #688
Uehreka wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was always my issue with pip and venv: I don’t want a thing that hijacks my terminal and PATH, flips my world upside down and makes writing automated headless scripts and systemd services a huge pain. When I drop into a Node.js project, usually some things have changed, but I always know that if I need to, I can find all of my dependencies in my node_modules folder, and I can package up that folder and move it w…

Having a directory like node_modules containing the dependencies is such an obviously good choice, it's sad how Python steering council actively resists this with what I find odd arguments. I think a lot of the decades old farce of Python package management would have been solved by this. https://peps.python.org/pep-0582/ https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-582-python-local-packages-d...

It's literally what a venv does and it is very widespread to just make a venv per project, just like you are creating a node_modules per project.

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

#756

Post by morshu9001 »

surajrmal wrote: post #636
morshu9001 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want type annotations. Was kinda the point of Python not to deal with types.

If you've ever used python on a project above a certain size (both lines of code and people who contribute to it), type annotations quickly become something you find useful.

I have, it didn't really help. It does help if you have no tests, but a large project needs tests.

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

#757

Post by zelphirkalt »

jdranczewski wrote: post #725
BrenBarn wrote: post #659

The sticking point for me is the way tools like uv and poetry build everything around the idea of a "project". I don't want a separate environment for every project, and I don't want to start by creating a project. I want to start with an environment that has stuff in it, and I start fiddling around, and gradually something comes together that eventually will be pulled out into a separate project. From what I can see…

I agree that having a reliable main environment for quick experiments is great! On Windows I just use the main Python installation as a global environment, since no system stuff depends on it, on Linux I tend to create a "main" environment in the home directory. Then I can still have per-project environments as needed (say with uv), for example for stuff that I need to deploy to the VPS. Note that I'm mostly in the r…

Especially in research the project environment approach makes sense, where results don't mean much without reproducibility.

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

#759

Post by lejalv »

antocuni wrote: post #711
miki123211 wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we had a language that had the syntax of Python (notably including operator overloading, which is absolutely critical for neural networks, ML, data science and numerical computations), the performance, compile times and concurrency support of Go, the type system flexibility of Typescript, and the native platform integration of C/C++.

This looks exactly what I'm trying to do with SPy -- although SPy is still "not there" and it's WIP. I literally wrote an intro post about it yesterday: https://antocuni.eu/2025/10/29/inside-spy-part-1-motivations...

This is an enlightening post and I am very excited about SPy.

I only wish discussions happened elsewhere than Discord, e.g. Zulip, where you can have web-public channels, which is great for searchable documentation, and you can interact with channels by email if you so desire.

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

#760

Post by BrenBarn »

matsemann wrote: post #722
BrenBarn wrote: post #659

The sticking point for me is the way tools like uv and poetry build everything around the idea of a "project". I don't want a separate environment for every project, and I don't want to start by creating a project. I want to start with an environment that has stuff in it, and I start fiddling around, and gradually something comes together that eventually will be pulled out into a separate project. From what I can see…

What you describe I think is what most other people hate the most about python. The fact that everything pollutes the global environment, which then becomes a mess of things depending on various versions, which also ends up breaking tools included in the OS and suddenly your whole system is effed.

I'm not talking about the global environment. I want to be able to have whatever environments I want. But my point is that the environments are not in a 1-1 relationship with "projects".
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