blog/content/posts/uv-the-new-python-package-installer-written-in-rust/index.md

title	date	draft	slug	tags	type
UV the new python package installer written in Rust	2024-02-23	true	uv-the-new-python-package-installer-written-in-rust	ci/cd docker python tools	programming

Overview

UV benchmark

Let's compare UV and VENV/PIP to see how this new solution performs: according to the creators, UV should be around 80x faster than python -m venv and 7x faster than virtualenv.

After creating virtual environments with these different tools, I was able to obtain the following results:

{{< chart >}} type: 'bar', data: { labels: ['uv', 'virtualenv', 'venv'], datasets: [{ data: [0.010, 0.153, 1.539], }] }, options: { indexAxis: 'y', elements: { bar: { borderWidth: 2, } }, responsive: true, plugins: { legend: { display: false, }, title: { display: true, text: 'Virtual environment creation' } } } {{< /chart >}}

In my case, UV is ~15x faster than virtualenv and ~150x faster than python -m venv. I then tried installing python packets with UV and PIP to compare speeds:

{{< chart >}} type: 'bar', data: { labels: ['uv', 'uv+cache', 'pip'], datasets: [{ data: [2.961, 0.413, 13.917], }] }, options: { indexAxis: 'y', elements: { bar: { borderWidth: 2, } }, responsive: true, plugins: { legend: { display: false, }, title: { display: true, text: 'Packages install (~100)' } } } {{< /chart >}}

For packet insertion I find that UV is ~5x faster than pip and ~33x faster then pip with the UV cache.

Docker image for CI/CD

UV

FROM python:3.11-slim

RUN python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip && \
    pip3 install uv && \
    uv venv && \
    . /.venv/bin/activate && \
    uv pip install ruff

ENV VIRTUAL_ENV /.venv
ENV PATH /.venv/bin:$PATH

debian@debian:~/dev/images$ docker build -t uv_python .
[...]
debian@debian:~/dev/images$ docker run -it --rm uv_python bash
root@ec910e7ea8eb:/# uv pip install django
Resolved 3 packages in 483ms
Downloaded 3 packages in 584ms
Installed 3 packages in 150ms
 + asgiref==3.7.2
 + django==5.0.2
 + sqlparse==0.4.4
root@ec910e7ea8eb:/# python3
Python 3.11.8 (main, Feb  7 2024, 22:49:54) [GCC 12.2.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import django
>>>

[...]
variables:
  UV_CACHE_DIR: "$CI_PROJECT_DIR/.cache/uv"

cache:
  - key: uv-pip-cache
    paths:
      - $CI_PROJECT_DIR/.cache/uv
[...]