Feature suggestion: uv venv -a/--activate

[simonw]

I'm trying to retrain myself to use uv run ... instead of activating my virtual environment (see Twitter) but I still find myself sometimes wishing it was quicker to create and then activate a virtual environment.

So how about this?

uv venv -a
# which is a shortcut for:
uv venv --activate

This would have the exact same effect as running:

uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate

[simonw]

Current uv venv --help:

Create a virtual environment

Usage: uv venv [OPTIONS] [PATH]

Arguments:
  [PATH]  The path to the virtual environment to create

Options:
      --no-project
          Avoid discovering a project or workspace
      --seed
          Install seed packages (one or more of: `pip`, `setuptools`, and
          `wheel`) into the virtual environment
      --allow-existing
          Preserve any existing files or directories at the target path
      --prompt <PROMPT>
          Provide an alternative prompt prefix for the virtual environment.
      --system-site-packages
          Give the virtual environment access to the system site packages
          directory
      --relocatable
          Make the virtual environment relocatable
      --index-strategy <INDEX_STRATEGY>
          The strategy to use when resolving against multiple index URLs [env:
          UV_INDEX_STRATEGY=] [possible values: first-index, unsafe-first-match,
          unsafe-best-match]
      --keyring-provider <KEYRING_PROVIDER>
          Attempt to use `keyring` for authentication for index URLs [env:
          UV_KEYRING_PROVIDER=] [possible values: disabled, subprocess]
      --allow-insecure-host <ALLOW_INSECURE_HOST>
          Allow insecure connections to a host [env: UV_INSECURE_HOST=]
      --exclude-newer <EXCLUDE_NEWER>
          Limit candidate packages to those that were uploaded prior to the
          given date [env: UV_EXCLUDE_NEWER=]
      --link-mode <LINK_MODE>
          The method to use when installing packages from the global cache [env:
          UV_LINK_MODE=] [possible values: clone, copy, hardlink, symlink]

Python options:
  -p, --python <PYTHON>
          The Python interpreter to use for the virtual environment. [env:
          UV_PYTHON=]
      --python-preference <PYTHON_PREFERENCE>
          Whether to prefer uv-managed or system Python installations [env:
          UV_PYTHON_PREFERENCE=] [possible values: only-managed, managed,
          system, only-system]
      --no-python-downloads
          Disable automatic downloads of Python. [env:
          "UV_PYTHON_DOWNLOADS=never"]

Index options:
  -i, --index-url <INDEX_URL>
          The URL of the Python package index (by default:
          <https://pypi.org/simple>) [env: UV_INDEX_URL=]
      --extra-index-url <EXTRA_INDEX_URL>
          Extra URLs of package indexes to use, in addition to `--index-url`
          [env: UV_EXTRA_INDEX_URL=]
  -f, --find-links <FIND_LINKS>
          Locations to search for candidate distributions, in addition to those
          found in the registry indexes
      --no-index
          Ignore the registry index (e.g., PyPI), instead relying on direct URL
          dependencies and those provided via `--find-links`

Cache options:
  -n, --no-cache               Avoid reading from or writing to the cache,
                               instead using a temporary directory for the
                               duration of the operation [env: UV_NO_CACHE=]
      --cache-dir <CACHE_DIR>  Path to the cache directory [env: UV_CACHE_DIR=]

So it looks like -a is available as an unused shortcut.

[simonw]

Aside:

Create a virtual environment

Usage: uv venv [OPTIONS] [PATH]

Arguments:
  [PATH]  The path to the virtual environment to create

The --help output currently implies that PATH is a required argument, but it's not - running uv venv alone is equivalent to uv venv ..

[AlexWaygood]

I believe this may be a duplicate of #8106 (sadly)

[zanieb]

Yeah this is a duplicate — unfortunately this is a limitation of shells.

If we ever do #1910 we could support this.