uv downloads overtake Poetry for Wagtail users

https://wagtail.org/blog/uv-overtakes-poetry/

by ThibWeb • 1 year ago

228 203 1 year ago

wagtail.org

est• 1 year ago

if an app or tool has a huge speed advantage, then I'd choose it no matter what.

XorNot• 1 year ago

It's the integrated python version management which sold me.

Took a huge chunk of complexity out of bootstrapping projects which I was otherwise handling myself.

mijoharas• 1 year ago

This is the one thing that took a while for me to get to grips with. I tend to use `asdf` for my python version management, which I want to continue to use since I use it for most other languages.

It'd be nice if we could have a shim for `uv` that allows it to play nice with `asdf` (there is an `asdf-uv` but seems to be about installing different versions of `uv` when instead I want to install different versions of python _via_ uv).

heisig• 1 year ago

I recently switched to uv, and I cannot praise it enough. With uv, the Python ecosystem finally feels mature and polished rather than like a collection of brittle hacks.

Kudos to the uv developers for creating such an amazing piece of software!

Wulfheart• 1 year ago

Ok, you convinced me to give it a try. Tbh, I am a casual user of python and I don't want to touch it unless I have a damn good reason to use it.

mlnj• 1 year ago

You do not need a damn good reason for this. Just try it out on a simple hello world. Then try it out on a project already using poetry for eg.

uv init

uv sync

and you're done

I'd say if you do not run into the pitfalls of a large python codebase with hundreds of dependencies, you'll not get the bigger argument people are talking about.

jorvi2• 1 year ago

I am a casual user of python and I don't want to touch it unless I have a damn good reason to use it.

I... what? Python is a beautiful way to evolve beyond the troglodyte world of sh for system scripts. You are seriously missing out by being so pertinently against it.

freeamz3• 1 year ago

What about using https://github.com/RustPython/RustPython also?

the_mitsuhiko4• 1 year ago

Unlike uv this tool is unlikely to solve problems for the average Python user and most likely will create new ones.

matsemann2• 1 year ago

Yeah, switched to writing python professionally ~4 years ago, and been low key hating the ecosystem. From a java and javascript background, it's mostly been npm/mvn install and it "just works". With python, there's always someone being onboarded that can't get it to work. So many small issues. Have to have the correct version per project, then have to get the venv running. And then installing it needs to build stuff because there's no wheel, so need to set up a complete c++ and rust toolchain etc., just to pull a small project and run it.

uv doesn't solve all this, but it's reduced the amount of ways things can go wrong by a lot. And it being fast means that the feedback-loop is much quicker.

gunalx• 1 year ago

I cannot share the same experiences. mvn is a buggy mess, randomly forgetting dependencies, and constantly needing a full clean to not die on itself. npm and the entire js ecosystem feels so immature with constant breaking changes, and circular dependency hell, when trying to uppgrade stuff.

notpushkin• 1 year ago

Python has been mostly working okay for me since I switched to Poetry. (“Mostly” because I think I’ve run into some weird issue once but I’ve tried to recall what it was and I just can’t.)

uv felt a bit immature at the time, but sounds like it’s way better now. I really want to try it out... but Poetry just works, so I don’t really have an incentive to switch just yet. (Though I’ve switched from FlakeHeaven or something to Ruff and the difference was heaven and hell! Pun in’tended.)

amelius6• 1 year ago

But how does it work with components that require libraries written in C?

And what if there are no binaries yet for my architecture, will it compile them, including all the dependencies written in C?

matrss2• 1 year ago

IMO if you require libraries in other languages then a pure python package manager like uv, pip, poetry, whatever, is simply the wrong tool for the job. There is _some_ support for this through wheels, and I'd expect uv to support them just as much as pip does, but they feel like a hack to me.

Instead there is pixi, which is similar in concept to uv but for the conda-forge packaging ecosystem. Nix and guix are also language-agnostic package managers that can do the job.

dagw9• 1 year ago

UV is not (yet) a build system and does not get involved with compiling code. But easily lets you plug in any build system you want. So it will let you keep using whatever system you are currently using for building your C libraries. For example I use scikit-build-core for building all of my libraries C and C++ components with cmake and it works fine with uv.

sirfz2• 1 year ago

Yes it'll build any dependency that has no binary wheels (or you explicitly pass --no-binary) as long as said package supports it (i.e. via setup.py/pyproject.toml build-backend). Basically, just like pip would

ffsm8• 1 year ago

Now, if I hadn't read literally the same message for Pipenv/Pipfile and poetry before, too...

Python is going through package managers like JS goes through trends like classes-everywhere, hooks, signals etc

OutOfHere3• 1 year ago

There have been incremental evolutionary improvements that were brought forth by each of the packages you named. uv just goes a lot further than the previous one. There have been others that deserve an honorary mention, e.g. pip-tools, pdm, hatch, etc. It's going to be very hard for anything to top uv.

Euphorbium• 1 year ago

Uv should replace pip for all I care.

ThibWeb6• 1 year ago

Well, seems like 100% what’s going to happen (for the majority of Wagtail users at least) if the current trend continues. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing to be frank. But we’ll have to adjust regardless.

darkfloo• 1 year ago

As a semi casual user of python that had to battle w/ dependency management recently, can you elaborate on why that would not be a good thing ? I thought about switching our project to uv but could not find the time necessary

freeamz3• 1 year ago

what about https://github.com/RustPython/RustPython ?

cibyr• 1 year ago

What about it? RustPython is an alternative interpreter; it's not in the same category of thing as pip or uv.

IshKebab• 1 year ago

Not a surprise. I said it before and I'll say it again, all the competing projects should just shut up shop for the good of Python. uv is so much better it's like pushing penny farthings after the safety bike has been invented.

nikisweeting3• 1 year ago

That's rough for all the creators of poetry, pdm, pipenv, etc. to hear. They put in a ton of great work over the last decade, but I fear you may be right.

alwyn• 1 year ago

I quite really like pdm! I can see why maybe poetry but especially pipenv might be replaced with uv, but what's the value of uv over pdm beyond performance? It ticks all my boxes otherwise.

rendaw• 1 year ago

Oh yeah, pipenv which was a shoddy mess that used personal connections and reputation to get promoted on the python website and poetry where the developer did a good job dismissing requests to support common use cases (like overriding dependencies).

slightwinder• 1 year ago

They served their purpose for the decade, so they can be happy that they did their thing to pave the road for a good successor. uv some day will also find it successor, this is how software lives. Celebrate the life, don't cry for how it ends.

emblaegh3• 1 year ago

Man, I’m so jealous of insane praise that uv (and most other astral tools) gets. I don’t think ever seen anything so unanimously lauded around here.

orthoxerox• 1 year ago

Tailscale?

emblaegh3• 1 year ago

It’s not really on my radar, but I’d be curious to know what other pieces of software get similar respect from their communities.

SilverSlash• 1 year ago

Guess people here don't talk much about cargo. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that cargo inspired uv. Rust with cargo showed for the first time that tooling _can_ be good, even for systems programming languages.

BiteCode_dev2• 1 year ago

uv has been introduced as cargo for python: https://astral.sh/blog/uv-unified-python-packaging

weberer• 1 year ago

Like with any social media site, you also have to consider the possibility that not all comments are 100% organic.

emblaegh3• 1 year ago

I’ve seen fishy looking engagement in hn before, but I’m inclined to think uv’s praise is genuine. It reflects the collective relief of seeing an extremely long and painful journey finally come to an end (hopefully).

new_user_final• 1 year ago

I am giving you a organic comment. uv works just like magic. Python tooling is mess, uv is here to save you.

mvATM99• 1 year ago

With good reason honestly. They take all the best practices from existing tooling we had, discard the bad, and make it run blazingly fast.

Ruff for me meant i could turn 4 pre-commit hooks (which you have to configure to be compatible with each other too) into just 1, and i no longer dread the "run Pylint and take a coffee break" moment.

I jumped ship to UV recently. Though i was skeptical at first i don't regret it. It makes dependency management less of a chore, and just something i can quickly do now. Switching from Poetry was easy for me too, only package i had issues with was pytorch, but that just required some different toml syntax.

DangitBobby• 1 year ago

Second only to SQLite. HN loves SQLite.

aosaigh• 1 year ago

I’m still using pip, what am I missing?

OtherShrezzing• 1 year ago

Poetry and uv both offer better dependency management, and project isolation out of the box. If you work in a team, or on more than one python project, then it's worth spending a day to install & adopt either one of these systems.

KORraN• 1 year ago

Both dependency management and project isolation are available in a standard Python 3 installation, also out of the box, without 3rd party tool dependency - `pip` and `python3 -m venv`. Admittedly, they work slower, but fast enough for me, especially that I do not run these commands every hour.

drexlspivey• 1 year ago

1) Deterministic environments 2) not having to manage python installations 3) 100x speed boost

stavros8• 1 year ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43386807

TOMDM2• 1 year ago

For the uninitiated what is the benefit of UV over pip?

I've been working with pip for so long now that I barely notice it unless something goes very wrong.

jonatron2• 1 year ago

Faster.

prashnts• 1 year ago

I can't stress how fast it is when using on resource constrained envs like a Pi Zero.

I intend to use system python there but previously poetry will simply crash the whole Pi while installing itself.

maratc2• 1 year ago

Ok, and what's the advantage for the people who don't have "my pip is too slow" problem?

atoav• 1 year ago

The problems start as soon as your scripts should run on more than your own computer.

If you pip install something, you install it on the system python (the python binary located at sys.executable). This can break systems if the wrong combination of dependencies comes together. This is why you should never install things via pip for other people, unless you asked them first.

Now how else would you install them? There is a thing called virtual environments, which basically allows you to install pip dependencies in such way, they are only there within the context of the virtual environment. This is what you should do when you distribute python programs.

Now the problem is how do you ensure that this install to the virtual environment uses specific versions? What happens when one library depends on package A with version 1.0 and another library depends on a package with version 2.0? Now what happens if you deploy that to an old debian with an older python version.. Before uv I had to spend literal days to resolve such conflicts.

uv solves most of these problems in one unified place, is extremely performant, just works and when it does not, it tells you precisely why.

shellac• 1 year ago

over pip

It's a much more complete tool than pip. If you've used poetry, or (in other languages) cargo, bundler, maven, then it's like that (and faster than poetry).

If you haven't, in addition to installing dependencies it will manage and lock their versions (no requirements.txt, and much more robust), look after the environment (no venv step), hold your hand creating projects, and probably other things.

Edit to add: the one thing it won't do is replace conda et al, nor is it intended to.

montebicyclelo• 1 year ago

It brings way more to the table than just being fast, like people are commenting. E.g. it manages Python for your projects, so if you say you want Python 3.12 in your project, and then you do 'uv run python my script.py', it will fetch and run the version of Python you specified, which pip can't do. It also creates lock files, so you know the exact set of Python package dependencies that worked, while you specify them more loosely. Plus a bunch of other stuff..

NeutralForest3• 1 year ago

- uv is aware of your dependencies, you can add/remove development dependencies, create group of development dependencies (test, lint, dev, etc) and add or remove those and only those at will. You can add dependencies and optional dependencies for a project as well, think my_app[cli,standard]. You don't need to have different requirements.txt for each case nor do you need to remove things by hand as you'd do in pip, since it doesn't remove deps when you remove a package for example. As a result, you can remove {conda,poetry,...} from your workflows.

- uv can install python and a virtualenv for you. Any command you run with `uv run` from the root of a repo will be aware of its environment, you don't even need to activate a virtualenv anymore. This replaces {pyenv, pyenv-virtualenv, virtualenvwrapper,...}.

- uv follows the PEPs for project config (dependencies, optional dependencies, tool configs) in the pyproject.toml so in case uv dies, it's possible to migrate away for the features are defined in the PEPs. Which is not the case for say, poetry.

- uv has a lock file and it's possible to make deps platform specific (Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc). This is in compliance with a PEP but not supported by all tools.

- uv supports custom indexes for packages so you can prefer a certain index, for example your company package index or pytorch's own index (for ML work).

- very fast, makes local dev very seamless and is really helpful in CI/CD where you might just setup and tear down python envs a lot.

Also, the team is responsive on Github so it's easy to get help.

adrian17• 1 year ago

Does this also replace, or work well with tox? We currently use it to run basic CI/local workflows (`tox -e lint` for all linters, `tox -e py310`, `tox -e py312` to run tests suites on chosen interpreters' environments), and to set up a local environment with package installed in-place (so that we can run `myprogram -arg1 -arg2` as if it was installed via `pip`, but still have it be editable by directly editing the repo).

With how much the ecosystem is moving, I don't know whether the way we're doing it is unusual (Django and some other big projects still have a tox.ini), obsolete (I can't find how ux obsoletes this), or perfectly fine and I just can't find how to replace pip with ux for this use case.

mbeex2• 1 year ago

...

- uv tool replaces pipx etc.

- uv pip --tree replaces pipdeptree (including 'inverse' mode)

- ...

TOMDM2• 1 year ago

Honestly this sounds more likely to replace some workflows I historically would have done with Docker.

The pain of creating a python environment that is durable across different deployments had me going for the nuclear option with full containerisation.

BiteCode_dev2• 1 year ago

The whole explaination is here: https://www.bitecode.dev/p/a-year-of-uv-pros-cons-and-should

The td;rd is that is has a lot less modes of failure.

globular-toast2• 1 year ago

The only advantage over pip is it's faster. But the downside is it's not written in Python.

The real point of uv is to be more than pip, though. It can manage projects, so basically CLI commands to edit your `pyproject.toml`, update a lockfile, and your venv all in one go. Unlike earlier tools it implements a pretty natural workflow on top of existing standards where possible, but for some things there are no standards, the most obvious being lockfiles. Earlier tools used "requirements.txt" for this which was quite lacking. uv's lockfile is cross-platform, although, admittedly does produce noisier diffs than requirements.txt, which is a shame.

chippiewill8• 1 year ago

As a straight pip replacement, yeah it's mostly just faster. Although it does have a few breaking changes that make it more secure (it has a more predictable way of resolving packages that reduce the risk of package squatting).

rschiavone• 1 year ago

Not only it's faster, it also provides a lock file, `uvx tool_name` just like `npx`, and a comprehensive set of tools to manage your Python version, your venv and your project.

You don't need `pyenv`, `poetry` and `pipx` anymore, `uv` does all of that for you.

zoobab• 1 year ago

Plenty of packages still fail trying to spawn cmake, gcc and al.

UV does not solve all the hard problems.

Maybe switch to Pixi?

Vaslo• 1 year ago

Switch to who?

KingMob3• 1 year ago

Google's not that broken yet: https://pixi.sh/latest/

quleap• 1 year ago

I'm extremely satisfied with Pixi. It fixes almost all the issues I had with conda and mamba. It supports both conda and pypi (via uv) packages. I don't know if uv fixes pip's dependency management hell. I settled on conda packages because pip was such a mess.

technopol• 1 year ago

uv sounds great! For those still using Python v2, how well does it work? pip used to be a pain when having to manage both Python v2 and v3 projects and tools.

rglullis• 1 year ago

If you are still on 2.7, packaging is the least of your problems

stavros8• 1 year ago

Unfortunately, I don't think many things nowadays are tested with a 15-year-old version of a language.

I was one of the last holdouts, preferring to keep 2.7 support if it wasn't too much hassle, but we have to move on at some point. Fifteen years is long enough support.

user9999999999• 1 year ago

is it me or is there a new python dependency manager every year?

nikisweeting3• 1 year ago

nah other than uv it's just poetry, pdm, and pipenv over last decade, and uv is so dominant I don't think anyone else will try making another one for a while

calmoo• 1 year ago

uv is definitely the final one, it's 100x better.

jessekv2• 1 year ago

Things were bad and really needed fixing. Several attempts were made.

yu3zhou4• 1 year ago

Well deserved, I wish more cloud providers have it preinstalled

globular-toast2• 1 year ago

Been using Python for 20 years and tried just about every tool related to packaging over the years. The only ones that worked well (IMO) were pip, pip-tools and venv. uv finally replaces all of them.

But being written in Rust means I'm having to also finally get somewhat proficient in Rust. Can any Rust developers comment on the quality of the uv codebase? I find it surprisingly procedural in style, with stuff like hundreds of `if dry_run` type things scattered throughout the codebase, for example. Is this normal Rust style?

ZuLuuuuuu3• 1 year ago

PyCharm also added uv support in their latest versions.

We recently switched to PDM in our company because it worked very well in our tests with different package/dependency managers. Now I am rethinking if we should switch to uv while PDM usage is still not very wide-spread in our company. But PDM works very well, so I am not sure whether to keep using it.

ThibWeb6• 1 year ago

With the caveat I only have the package installers usage data for Wagtail downloads – pdm usage has fallen off a cliff, from 0.2% of downloads in January 2024, to 0.01% in January 2025. Roughly matches the uptake of uv.

Doesn’t make pdm bad in itself but that means there’ll be fewer pdm users around to report bugs, potentially fewer contributors to it too, fewer resources, etc.

ZuLuuuuuu3• 1 year ago

Indeed, on one hand PDM works great, but on the other hand we wouldn't want to choose a package manager which might not be maintained anymore after a few years because there are just not many users of it.

chippiewill8• 1 year ago

Back when PDM was still pushing __pypackages__ for standardisation I think PDM made sense, but honestly I don't think it adds anything over uv and is just going to be slower for the most part.

karel-3d• 1 year ago

I don't understand a word of the headline, I guess I am not the intended audience.

qwertox3• 1 year ago

I've read so much positive feedback about uv, that I'd really like to use it, but I'm unsure if it fits my needs.

I was heavily invested into virtualenv until I had to upgrade OS versions, which upgraded the Python versions and therefore broke the venvs.

I tried to solve this by using pyenv, but the need of recompiling Python on every patch wasn't something which I would accept, specially in regards to boards like Raspberry Pis.

Then I tried miniconda which I initially only liked because of the precompiled Python binaries, and ultimately ended up using pyenv-managed miniforge so that I could run multiple "instances" of miniforge and therefore upgrade miniforge gradually.

Pyenv also has a plugin which allows to set suffixes to environments, which allows me to have multiple miniforges of the same version in different locations, like miniforge-home and miniforge-media, where -home has all files in the home dir and -media has all files on a mounted nvme, which then is where I put projects with huge dependencies like CUDA inside, not cluttering home, which is contained in a VM image.

It works really great, Jupyter and vscode can use them as kernels/interpreters, and it is fully independent of the OS's Python, so that OS upgrades (22.04 -> 24.04) are no longer an issue.

But I'm reading about all these benefits of uv and wish I could use it, but somehow my setup seems to have tied my hands. I think I can't use uv in my projects.

Any recommendations?

Edit: Many of my projects share the same environment, this is absolutely normal for me. I only create a new environment if I know that it will be so complex that it might break things in existing environments.

secondcoming• 1 year ago

The python ecosystem has become a disaster. Even reading your post gave me a headache.

the_mitsuhiko4• 1 year ago

I’m a bit confused why uv is not an option for you. You don’t need to compile Python, it manages virtualenvs for you, you can use them with Jupyter and vscode. What are you missing?

qwertox3• 1 year ago

So the only difference is that Conda also isolates "system" libraries (like libcublasLt.so), or does uv also do this?

It's not that uv is not an option for me, I made this move to miniforge before uv was on my radar because it wasn't popular, but I'm still at a point where I'm not sure if uv can do what I need.

datadeft3• 1 year ago

I have moved to uv few months back and never looked back. I use it with venv and it works very well. There is a new environment handling way with uv:

- uv init new-py-env

- cd new-py-env

- uv add jupyter

- uv build

These are executed super fast. Not sure if this could help your situation but it is worth to be aware of these.

be7a• 1 year ago

Have you checked out https://github.com/prefix-dev/pixi? It's built by the folks who developed Mamba (a faster Conda implementation). It supports PyPI dependencies using UV, offers first-class support for multi-envs and lockfiles, and can be used to manage other system dependencies like CUDA. Their CLI also embraces much of the UX of UV and other modern dependency management tools in general.

bsdz3• 1 year ago

I feel for me, at least one nice thing about poetry over uv is, that if I have an issue or feature extension, I can just write my own plugin in pure Python. With uv, I'd need to learn Rust in addition to python/c/c++/etc.

I wonder what it would take to get poetry on par with uv for those who are already switching to it? Poetry is definitely very slow downloading multiple versions of packages to determine dependencies (not sure how uv works around this?). Does uv have a better dependency checker algorithm?

wiseowise• 1 year ago

I wonder what it would take to get poetry on par with uv

Different laws of physics, to start with.

rmholt2• 1 year ago

For me personally the killer uv feature is pyenv integration, which poetry doesn't do

bsdz3• 1 year ago

Interesting - thanks. I use virtual environments and each has its own python version tied to it. Not sure if pyenv is useful to me but who knows perhaps one day. Good to know uv supports pyenv.

chippiewill8• 1 year ago

In this day and age you don't usually have to download the packages to resolve the dependencies as PyPI can usually expose it (unless you need to install from sdist which is less common these days).

Dependency resolution is slow because it's computationally very expensive. Because uv is written in Rust the resolution is just much much faster. IIRC they actually reuse the same resolution package that Cargo (Rust's package manager) uses.

bsdz3• 1 year ago

Yes I think I heard pypi started exposing dependency info so it makes sense to use that where possible.

The dependency resolution computation is an interesting problem. I think poetry at some point switched to mypyc for compilation (although I can't find conclusive evidence for it now). From my experience, mypyc doesn't really improve performance much compared to say writing a c/c++ extension. Perhaps offloading dependency resolution in poetry to a native c library is a way to match uv.

dagw9• 1 year ago

I wonder what it would take to get poetry on par with uv for those who are already switching to it?

Poetry and uv have quite different philosophy. Poetry is incredibly opinionated in how you should do things, and trying to make poetry fit an existing project or combining poetry with other tools is quite likely to break. Uv on the hand is far more flexible and easier to make work with your current workflow. For me that was the main reason I gave up poetry, and in that aspect poetry will probably never be 'on par' with uv since these aren't technical differences, but differences of philosophy.

raverbashing• 1 year ago

Curious what you found too opinionated about Poetry (not saying it doesn't happen)

mihaic• 1 year ago

I keep reading praise about uv, and every single time I never really understand what problems it addresses.

I've got a couple quite big Django projects for which I've used venv for years, and not once have I had any significant issues with it. Speed at times could have been better and I would have liked to have a full dependency list lock file, but that never caused me issues.

The only thing that comes to mind is those random fails to build of C/C++ dependencies. Does uv address this? I've always seen people rave about other benefits.

hansihe• 1 year ago

What makes it so great for me is the effortlessness.

I often use Python for quick one off scripts. With UV I can just do `uv init`, `uv add` to add dependencies, and `uv run` whatever script I am working on. I am up and running in under a minute. I also feel confident that the setup isn't going to randomly break in a few weeks.

With most other solutions I have tried in the Python ecosystem, it always seemed significantly more brittle. It felt more like a collection of hacks than anything else.

aneidon• 1 year ago

You can even inline the dependencies:

https://docs.astral.sh/uv/guides/scripts/#declaring-script-d...

That plus this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42855258

Makes it pretty seamless for one-off scripts.

chippiewill8• 1 year ago

The benefit that uv adds is it's a one-stop-shop that's also wicked fast.

If you use venv then you have extra steps because you have to explicitly create the venv, then explicitly install the deps there with pip. If your project is designed for a specific python version then developers have to manage that separately (usually pyenv these days).

For people building apps uv replaces venv, pip and pyenv, while being way faster at doing all three of those (you can completely rebuild the virtualenv and install the dependencies from scratch in under a second usually because uv is faster at creating a virtualenv than venv and is very quick at relinking the dependencies from a package cache).

ashikns• 1 year ago

I'm in the same boat. Sure it's nice and better, but I haven't felt so much annoyance with the python ecosystem that I desperately need something better. I use VS Code and it takes care of venv automatically, so I am biased by that.

BerislavLopac• 1 year ago

As much as I am glad that it looks like one solution is being more and more accepted as the golden standard, I'm a little disappointed that PDM [0] -- which has been offering pretty much everything uv does for quite some time now -- has been completely overlooked. :(

[0] https://pdm-project.org

porridgeraisin• 1 year ago

pdm actually supports using uv as the resolver

https://pdm-project.org/en/latest/usage/uv/

brokegrammer• 1 year ago

I switched from Poetry to uv last year. I like the speed and how it stores virtual envs in a .venv directory along with the project by default, whereas Poetry store it in a separate directory in your home directory by default, which makes it hard to work with tools that only discover virtual envs in the project root.

uv tool is also a great replacement for pipx.

I think it's the way to go for Python dependency management in 2025.

rubenvanwyk• 1 year ago

May uv please keep on eating the python world. It's so good.

DHolzer• 1 year ago

I recently checked out UV, and it's impressively fast. However, one challenge that keeps coming up is handling anything related to CUDA and Torch.

Last week, I started developing directly in PyTorch containers using just pip and Docker. With GPU forwarding on Windows no longer being such a hassle, I'm really enjoying the setup. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that I might be overlooking something critical.

I’d love to hear what the HN crowd thinks about this type of env.

jerrygenser• 1 year ago

I've used uv with pytorch and cuda fine. What problem have you had?

I also use it in docker to build the container.

mbeex2• 1 year ago

At least my kind of problems were solved by

https://docs.astral.sh/uv/guides/integration/pytorch/#instal...

fluidcruft2• 1 year ago

I assume you've seen this:

https://docs.astral.sh/uv/guides/integration/pytorch/

If the platform (OS) solution works for you that's probably the easiest. It doesn't for me because I work on multiple Linux boxes with differing GPUs/CUDAs. So I've use the optional dependencies solution and it's mostly workable but with an annoyance that uv sync forgets the --extra that have been applied in the venv so that if you "uv add" something it will uninstall the installed torch and install the wrong one until I re-run uv sync with the correct --extra again. (uv add with --extra does something different) And honestly I appreciate not having hidden venv states but it is a bit grating.

There are some ways to setup machine/user specific overrides with machine and user uv.toml configuration files.

https://docs.astral.sh/uv/configuration/files/

That feels like it might help but I haven't figured out how to configure get that to help it pick/hint the correct torch flavor for each machine. Similar issues with paddlepaddle.

Honestly I just want an extras.lock at this point but that feels like too much of a hack for uv maintainers to support.

I have been pondering whether nesting uv projects might help so that I don't actually build venvs of the main code directly and the wrapper depends specifically on certain extras of the wrapped projects. But I haven't looked into this yet. I'll try that after giving up on uv.toml attempts.

__mharrison__• 1 year ago

I just taught a week long course, Advanced Python for Data Scientists. The first day we discussed how to use uv. The feedback was "this UV content is worth the price of the whole course".

Using uv is an easy sell to anyone who has worked with Python.

Great work Charlie and team.

zachwill• 1 year ago

I’ve been primarily a Python developer since 2012 and recently switched to uv. The ability to manage dependencies, venv, and multiple Python versions makes it best-in-class now. It really is a fantastic tool.

Tewboo• 1 year ago

It's interesting to see UV downloads surpassing Poetry for Wagtail users. Could be a sign of growing preference for speed and simplicity.

bootsmann• 1 year ago

Poetry also is a true open source project without corporate backing iirc, so they don't have the publicity levers that uv has.

fluidcruft2• 1 year ago

uv is open source

https://docs.astral.sh/uv/reference/policies/license/

There is not true vs untrue open source unless perhaps you intend copyleft, but that has nothing to do with whether or not there is corporate backing. Even GNU itself has had corporate backing for its compiler work and other utilities.

rob• 1 year ago

uv, ruff.... Astral doesn't miss. Excited to see what else they can bring to the Python world.

Had an issue running something on the latest Python version installed (3.13) but only needed to 'downgrade' to 3.11 to run that particular script. Just a simple:

`uv run --python 3.11 --with openai-whisper transcribe.py`

And no need to mess with anything else.

jessekv2• 1 year ago

what else they can bring

type checking

jimmydoe• 1 year ago

I don't understand the chart, does it say wagtail suddenly had a lot more uv traffic, but pip and poetry did not drop much? what does that mean? new batch of users emerges using uv? behavior of new uv version disrupted the chart?

brylie• 1 year ago

As an aside, I can't praise the Wagtail CMS highly enough. It sets a high bar for usability and accessibility of the auto-generated content management UI.

The developer experience is top notch with excellent documentation and many common concerns already handled by Wagtail or Django. A significant amount of Wagtail-specific code is declarative, essentially describing data model, relationships, and UI fields. The parts that you don't need stay out of the way. It's also agnostic of the type of front-end you want, with full and automatic support for headless mode with JavaScript client, using traditional Django templates SSR, or using a dynamic approach like HTMX.

Kudos to the Wagtail team!

ThibWeb6• 1 year ago

ty! We have no plans to rewrite Wagtail in Rust but I hope there’s ways in which we can make the developer experience better, particularly around dependencies management

sireat• 1 year ago

Coming from 10+ years of pip and also heavy venv user - uv seems pretty good.

First impressions of uv are quite nice, but how does one change Python versions once you have a project up?

I installed 3.13 with `uv python install python3.13`

I see bunch of Python versions now with `uv python list` (uv even found my old Anaconda 3.9 install from way back)

But how would I switch to 3.13?

LLM hallucinates with `uv venv use 3.13` but that command does not work.

I see from https://docs.astral.sh/uv/concepts/projects/config/#python-v... that one can specify the version in pyproject.toml, but should not there be a command line to switch?

toenail• 1 year ago

path/to/venv/bin/uv pip install foo installs to the global venv, not path/to/venv. Sadly that's a deal breaker for me, everything else looked great.

bsdice• 1 year ago

Biggest issue I have, is not solving all the dependency hell that is Python with its unversioned libraries, but supply chain attacks. Also regressions introduced by new versions all the time.

That is why for projects I resolve everything by hand, add all coarsely audited 3rd party libraries to ./lib/, and the main entry file then does this:

#!/usr/bin/env -S /bin/sh -c "_top_dir=\"\$(dirname \"\$(realpath -s \"\$0\")\")\"; cd \"\$_top_dir\"; exec \"\$_top_dir/python/install/bin/python3\" -W once::DeprecationWarning -X dev \"\$0\" \"\$@\""

import os

import sys

# Insert ./lib/ in front of search path

sys.path.insert(0, os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "lib"))

...

I like the excellent standalone CPython by indygreg, now under astral-sh's github organization. Unpack as is into ./python/ and done. Because Arch Linux would just roll forward to whatever version is latest, introducing new warnings every month or two and havoc on any new major version.

Project is fully portable, copy anywhere that has glibc, run.

uv downloads overtake Poetry for Wagtail users

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