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Comment by rr808 | Hacker News Reader

How many package managers can one language have? Its a simple language but setting it up is just incredibly bad. Maybe this is the one or should I wait for the next?

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I had the same sentiment, but uv seems to have eliminated the competition. Installing uv using your OS package manager is enough as it can also download and install (isolated) Python interpreters as well.

Except pip still exists and is default, and even if they adopted uv as default instead, all the legacy stuff takes years to change.

pip is not a package manager, it's only meant for installing packages. Also, uv has a pip-compliant interface through `uv pip` which lets you interface with pip easily.

Those shouldn't be separate things. uv is both. Anyway, the default package manager is pipenv https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/tutorials/managing-de...

You do you. I'm happy with uv.

> even if they adopted uv as default instead, all the legacy stuff takes years to change

Who are "they"? I am not waiting for anyone to adopt uv. I've adopted it myself and forgotten about pip as uv is pip-compatible for all practical purposes.

The Python foundation first off, then companies and teams using it. If you're a 1-person team then sure you pick everything, but even then you have to worry about compatibility with other tools. Like, Heroku only got support recently: https://www.heroku.com/blog/local-speed-smooth-deploys-herok... or if you're running someone else's code, maybe you have to figure out your own pyproject.toml

Compare to npm which has been the default installer/manager in NodeJS since forever, so it's totally supported, and any git repo you happen to download has a package.json

I recommend trying it, it gets a ton of hype but I think for good reason.

This is the one.

> Its a simple language

No, it isn’t. This misconception is common and I don’t know where it comes from.

Python is a very complex language hiding behind friendly syntax.

imo all I usually need is pip-tools and venv, but uv kind of bundles the two together in a very natural way (and is very fast)

Unless you're installing a new version of python, I have trouble seeing how preceding all the normal command with "uv" can be seen as much of a difference.

It's not that much of a difference, but it is faster, and when you do need to switch pythons, you're already set up. uv also has some different workflows, universal lock files, and the caching is also nice. And the PEP 723 support is cool!

Poetry was a big difference, it was also very slow for me, and so I never picked it up.

I wish they would make uv default and end this game.

Its a simple language

It really isn't, and that is why the install and setup tools are so problematic. They have to hide and overcome a lot of complexity.

This is the way

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