An unbiased evaluation of Python environment and packaging tools (2023)

Great article. It’s not so bad as a user of python honestly. Venv goes a long way, and with docker its get the rest of the way there.<p>The problem is when you want to open-source a package. I consider myself a professional Python developer, yet I was completely overwhelmed with all ways you can manage and release a package. Hatch, poetry, rye, setup, and a million other things that can make you a waste days fighting the language.<p>I highly recommend this cookiecutter from Simon Willison: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simonwillison.net&#x2F;2024&#x2F;Jan&#x2F;16&#x2F;python-lib-pypi&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simonwillison.net&#x2F;2024&#x2F;Jan&#x2F;16&#x2F;python-lib-pypi&#x2F;</a><p>I just open-sourced a project last week[0] and it took 5 minutes (after 2 days fighting other tools).<p>0. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pypi.org&#x2F;project&#x2F;agentrun&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pypi.org&#x2F;project&#x2F;agentrun&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m surprised there&#x27;s no mention of Docker or other container-based strategies. In my world, Docker has neatly, cleanly and -- perhaps most importantly -- _portably_ addressed all of the &quot;environment management&quot; and &quot;Python version management&quot; concerns outlined in this post.

What held me back from using Python more is the absolute madness of these tools and the ecosystem. Like, Node looks like a tidy ecosystem in comparison. I&#x27;ve tried almost all the tools in those venn diagrams in the article and I probably had the most luck with poetry + pyenv. But then I started having version conflicts with the packages and gave up. Most packages out there are just released to Pypi with little consideration to the right dependencies to require. Other languages I used that have really solid package management tools: Ruby, Java, Rust, Go. Node with pnpm seems to be reaching a good point.

After this blogpost was published in 2023, uv came along:<p>&gt; TL;DR: uv is an extremely fast Python package installer and resolver, written in Rust, and designed as a drop-in replacement for pip and pip-tools workflows.<p>&gt; uv represents a milestone in our pursuit of a &quot;Cargo for Python&quot;: a comprehensive Python project and package manager that&#x27;s fast, reliable, and easy to use.<p>&gt; As part of this release, we&#x27;re also taking stewardship of Rye, an experimental Python packaging tool from Armin Ronacher. We&#x27;ll maintain Rye as we expand uv into a unified successor project, to fulfill our shared vision for Python packaging.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;astral.sh&#x2F;blog&#x2F;uv" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;astral.sh&#x2F;blog&#x2F;uv</a>

A few years ago I landed on pyenv + poetry, and this venn diagram set made me feel validated!