uv

About uv

uv is an extremely fast Python package and project manager written in Rust by Astral. It replaces pip, pip-tools, virtualenv, pyenv, pipx, and poetry in a single unified tool, delivering 10–100x faster dependency resolution and installation through intelligent global caching.

Key Features

• 1Replaces pip, pip-tools, virtualenv, pyenv, pipx, and poetry with a single unified CLI
• 2Resolves and installs dependencies 10–100x faster than pip using a global disk cache and Rust-native resolver
• 3Manages Python versions natively — installs and switches between Python versions without pyenv
• 4Runs single-file Python scripts with inline dependency declarations using `uv run`
• 5Generates cross-platform lockfiles for reproducible builds with `uv lock`

How Python Data Engineers Use uv

Python data engineers use uv to set up isolated project environments faster than any alternative — running `uv sync` installs all dependencies from a lockfile in seconds rather than minutes, even in fresh CI containers. The `uv run` command executes scripts or tools in ad-hoc virtual environments without manually activating anything, making one-off data processing scripts trivial to share. For teams managing multiple Python versions across projects, `uv python install 3.11 3.12` and per-project `.python-version` files eliminate the need for pyenv entirely. The global cache layer means that once a package version is downloaded, every subsequent project or CI job that needs it installs from disk at near-zero cost.