In my last post (two years ago!!!), I looked at PDM as a package manager because I was feeling a little frustrated with Poetry. TLDR: It didn’t work out, and I stuck with Poetry.
But recently I’ve been using uv, and I’m hooked. It is so fast, and it has a solid solver. I also appreciate the options it has for different ways of managing a project, as well as the handy uvx (or uv tool) command to run “tools” that aren’t part of your project. I think of those as a more temporary version of what I would otherwise install with pipx.
I do have one small complaint about uv though. I want to be able to manage a project without adding a src directory, and without a README.md or hello.py file being forced on me. Mostly, I want to be able to teach this to beginners without having to explain any of these extra things…
For my own use (but not for teaching), I’ve found the following bash function helpful—I just put it into my .profile script:
# Quick `uv init` without src directory, "README.md", or "hello.py".
# Project name is optional (default to directory if not provided).
function uvi() {
if [ ! -z "$1" ] ; then
NAME="--name=$1"
fi
uv init --app --no-readme --no-workspace ${NAME} && rm hello.py
}
export -f uvi
With this, I can just type uvi and get a new project in my current directory without any of the extras. I just wish there was an easy way to run it in this mode for teaching purposes.