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Comment by s_ting765 | Hacker News Reader

Rust rewrites are known for breaking (compatibility with) working software. That's all there is to them.

In Python's case, as the article describes quite clearly, the issue is that the design of "working software" (particularly setup.py) was bad to the point of insane (in much the same way as the NPM characteristics that enabled the recent Shai Hulud supply chain attacks, but even worse). At some point, compatibility with insanity has got to go.

Helpfully, though, uv retains compatibility with newer (but still well-established) standards in the Python community that don't share this insanity!

My gripe is with Rust rewrites. Not uv. Though I very much think uv is overhyped.

Actually uv retains compatibility with the setup.py “insanity,” according to the article:

> uv parses TOML and wheel metadata natively, only spawning Python when it hits a setup.py-only package that has no other option

The article implies that pip also prefers toml and wheel metadata, but has to shell out to parse those, unlike uv.

Ugh. Thank you for the correction. :(

I mean, you’re on the right track in that they did cut out other insanity. But unclear how much of the speed up is necessarily tied to breaking backward compat (are there a lot of “.egg” files in the wild?)

> (are there a lot of “.egg” files in the wild?)

Not as far as I can tell, except perhaps in extended-support legacy environments (for example, ActiveState is still maintaining a Python 2.x distribution).

I would say the downside of them is that they're known for replacing GPL software with MIT software

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