Blazing-Fast Dependency Management with uv

Beginner7 minTrending

Use uv from Astral as a drop-in replacement for pip and virtualenv with 10-100x faster installs and built-in project management.

Prerequisites

-Python 3.8+ installed

Steps

Install uv

Install the uv package manager globally. It is a single static binary with no Python dependency required for installation.

$ curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

On Windows, use: powershell -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex" instead.

Create a new project

Scaffolds a new Python project with pyproject.toml, a src layout, and a ready-to-use .venv. No manual environment creation needed.

$ uv init myproject && cd myproject

Add dependencies

Adds packages to pyproject.toml and installs them into the managed virtual environment. The lock file (uv.lock) is updated automatically.

$ uv add requests flask sqlalchemy

Use 'uv add --dev pytest ruff' to add development-only dependencies.

Add development dependencies

Adds packages to the dev dependency group. These are installed during development but excluded from production builds.

$ uv add --dev pytest ruff mypy

Run a script in the project environment

Runs the script using the project's managed virtual environment. You do not need to manually activate the venv.

$ uv run python main.py

uv run automatically syncs dependencies before executing, so you never have a stale environment.

Sync and lock dependencies

Regenerate the lock file from pyproject.toml and sync the virtual environment to match. Use this after manually editing pyproject.toml.

$ uv lock && uv sync

Always commit uv.lock to version control. It ensures every team member and CI gets the exact same dependency versions.

Full Script

full-script.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Fast project setup with uv
set -e

PROJECT_NAME=${1:-myproject}

# Install uv if not present
if ! command -v uv &> /dev/null; then
  curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
fi

uv init "$PROJECT_NAME"
cd "$PROJECT_NAME"

uv add requests flask sqlalchemy
uv add --dev pytest ruff mypy

uv run python -c "import requests; print('Setup complete. requests version:', requests.__version__)"

echo "Project '$PROJECT_NAME' ready with uv."

FAQ

Discussion

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#!/bin/bash # Fast project setup with uv set -e PROJECT_NAME=${1:-myproject} # Install uv if not present if ! command -v uv &> /dev/null; then curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh fi uv init "$PROJECT_NAME" cd "$PROJECT_NAME" uv add requests flask sqlalchemy uv add --dev pytest ruff mypy uv run python -c "import requests; print('Setup complete. requests version:', requests.__version__)" echo "Project '$PROJECT_NAME' ready with uv."