Python packages

pip is old school! uv is faster and more convenient.

Here’s a quick-start guide:

1. Install uv:
   • preferably get it from the source
   • alternately, run pip install uv (not recommended)
2. Navigate to a new folder for your project
3. Run uv init to initiate the project folder
4. Run uv add package1 package2 ... to install packages and automatically update the requirements
5. Run a file wih uv run filename.py

Or, if you have code with a pyproject.toml that you want to set up and run,

1. Download the repository and navigate to it
2. Run uv sync

That’s it! No more messing around with venv and requirement.txts, and wrangling dependencies, and waiting for ten minutes for everything to install. It’s fast enough that you can spin up an entire version of Python for a single script.

Note the following:

• uv automatically creates and maintains a pyproject.toml, which is a modern version of requirements.txt that includes versioning, Python version, and more information for greater reproducibility
• uv also automatically creates a virtual environment and activates it for use
• uv creates a lockfile that ensures cross-platform reproducibility!

This way, you never need to use pip or virtualenv or other tools: everything is handled consistently with uv.

You can also use a specific version of Python for each project!