Discuss `uv` and add it to the website.

[samcunliffe]

Which Section of the Documentation Needs Improving?

We should decide on a traffic light for uv and add it to the appropriate doc page.
In case we decide 🟢, we should add it to the template and update docs accordingly.

What Can be Improved About This Section

Add uv. Feels like it's at least an amber 🟠.

How to Improve This Section

No response

[paddyroddy]

I'm using it and it is super quick. I was using https://github.com/tox-dev/tox-uv, but it was very buggy, not sure if that was tox-uv's fault or uv's, so I removed it from my CI for now.

[samcunliffe]

Notes from hackmorning 2024-10-22

• Note: We should also add pixi as 🟠.

Discussion

The "problem" with uv is that it does more than one thing.

1. A drop-in replacement for pip.
2. A replacement virtual environment manager uv venv (using venv syntax).
3. A project installation dependency thing (replacement for e.g. setuptools.. more similar to pipfile).

Relating to venv

• venvs per project. So @dstansby 's preference for a central place for all virtual environments is already broken by venv.
• uv may give the option to put all of the environments in a central place uv/#1495
• Style choice?

Research computing people (@heatherkellyucl @ikirker 👋) strongly discourage conda on UCL-ARC clusters. So we should move away from recommending it.

Summary

If you're new to the game you should use uv. If you prefer conda, maybe pixi is faster, but you're not new to the game. And we're targeting noobs.

Decisions

We will replace conda create etc commands in our readmes and instructions with uv equivalent commands.

• Our cookiecutter template doesn't have a workflow to publish via conda-forge despite us advocating the conda tool.
  • This is no different from recommending uv venv but not using the full-blown uv project mechanics.

Add uv to the virtual environments page as amber with a caveat that it will likely become green when some feature requests are ironed out..