Uv Package Manager

UV Package Manager

uv is an extremely fast Python package installer (10-100x faster than pip), written in Rust.

Essential Commands

# Virtual environment
uv venv                         # Create .venv
uv venv --python 3.12           # With specific Python version
uv run python script.py         # Run in venv (no activation needed)
uv run pytest                   # Run CLI tool in venv

# Dependency management (pyproject.toml based)
uv add requests pandas          # Add packages
uv add --dev pytest black       # Add dev dependencies
uv remove requests              # Remove package
uv sync                         # Install all dependencies from lockfile
uv lock                         # Create/update lockfile

# pip-compatible interface
uv pip install -r requirements.txt   # Install from requirements
uv pip install package_name          # Install single package
uv pip list                          # List installed packages

# Python version management
uv python install 3.12          # Install Python version
uv python pin 3.12              # Pin version for project

Key Patterns

• New project: uv init . && uv add <deps> && uv run python main.py
• Existing project: uv sync to install all deps from lockfile
• Run without activating venv: Always use uv run <command> instead of activating
• Prefer uv add over uv pip install — it updates pyproject.toml and lockfile