astral-sh/uv is the best Python AiO tool that I've used. Granted, I haven't used a lot; but still. It's pretty good.

  • It manages your Python version so you don't have to wrangle with that at all.
  • It has --dev dependencies unlike plain pip
  • You can still use uv pip <pip_command_args> just as you would normal pip
  • It's ⚡fast⚡
  • It follows PEP standards instead of doing its own thing (looking at you Poetry)
  • A single binary
  • Doesn't require Python to install uv

It does have some downsides:

  • Doesn't bundle a formatter or linter (still have to uv add ruff)
  • Doesn't have a task runner (no uv task <task_name>)
  • Nobody knows about it
  • People confuse it with rye
  • It doesn't have its own build backend (yet)
  • It doesn't bundle a type hint checker

The easiest way to install uv is through one of their installer scripts:

macOS & Linux 
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
Windows 
powershell -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

📚 You can find more installation instructions on the uv website.

Now to create a Python package and publish it to PyPI is as simple as this:

uv init --lib
uv add --dev ruff pyright poethepoet pyinstaller
$EDITOR src/*.py
uv publish

Cool, right? It even manages the Python installation for you automatically.

You can even write standalone Python scripts like this:

#!/usr/bin/env uv run
# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.12"
# dependencies = [
#   "requests",
#   "rich",
# ]
# ///

import requests
from rich.pretty import pprint

resp = requests.get("https://peps.python.org/api/peps.json")
data = resp.json()
pprint([(k, v["title"]) for k, v in data.items()][:10])

📚 Read more about running scripts with uv

If you're looking to install a pip-provided CLI tool globally like pip install cmakelang provides cmake-format you can use uv tool install cmakelang. There's also uvx if you want the npx equivalent.

I think uv is cool. It's fast, easy to install, and it gets out of your way. You just write code and use uv run <my_package> or uv run ./entry_point.py to run your project. The virtual environment is not hidden like Poetry; it's right there in .venv if you want to go poking around.