Uv - another Rust tool written to replace Pip

[pf_moore (Paul Moore)]

Thanks for the response. There’s already a discussion going on at Provide `pip` -> `uv pip` alias in virtual environments · Issue #1331 · astral-sh/uv · GitHub which seems very related to this. I’m strongly against the idea of uv ever installing a pip command that redirects to uv pip rather than being the actual pip command, and I think the fact that the suggestion was made in the first place indicates that there are already people who see uv pip and pip as at least somewhat interchangeable

I’m speaking purely for myself, as one of the pip maintainers but not on behalf of the pip project as a whole, but I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t use the subcommand name pip.

I’ve advocated for a long time in favour of having more competition in the installer area, so that people have alternatives to pip. I stand by that view, but I think it’s crucial that such alternatives compete on their own merits, advertising themselves as distinct offerings and not as “alternative versions of pip”.

@charliermarsh

Just to spell it out explicitly: we went with the uv pip interface since I thought it was the simplest way to make the API immediately-clear and self-explanatory for existing pip and pip-tools users.

If you were replicating the exact pip command line interface, then I could see this as a valid argument. But as it stands, it’s not - the first thing I tried to do when trying out uv was to run uv pip list and it didn’t work. If uv had its own command structure, I’d never have tried that but would instead have checked what the uv equivalent was. And in general, while I’ll concede that I’m far too familiar with pip’s CLI to count as an “average” user, my impression of uv pip was that it was an uncomfortably unfamiliar experience, vaguely reminiscent of pip but annoyingly different. And while I fully expect you’ll add more pip features over time, IMO this will likely just make the differences more subtle, but still just as uncomfortable (the “uncanny valley” effect).

@charliermarsh

We also wanted to scope those commands under some non-top-level namespace, to leave our CLI open to adding a more opinionated workflow in the future, like uv build and such. (If we used uv install, we could never add a more opinionated installation command in the future.)

Understood. And I honestly struggled to think of a subcommand name that would work. Assuming you don’t want to simply omit the pip and make all of the uv pip subcommands into top-level subcommands in their own right, there really isn’t a good option - uv install install is silly, for example. But none of that makes uv pip any more reasonable than any other arbitrary name like uv ipk (Install PacKage…)

Hopefully the other pip maintainers will share their views as well, so you have a more balanced response from the pip project as a whole. /ping @pradyunsg @sbidoul @uranusjr