Virtual environments using 'uv'

Creation!

In a previous blog post, I’d introduced the usage of “uv” in an existing python environment and demonstrated some benchmarks . But I hadn’t demonstrated how to create a virtual environment using it - as simple as it is.

So this is the article that fills that gap.

First, if you’ve not already installed uv, install it in your global space using

python3 -m pip install uv

This is assuming you have. a version of python3 (preferably > 3.10) installed on your system. If not, that is the first thing you’ll want to do from https://www.python.org/downloads/.

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Creating a new virtual environment using ‘uv’ -

Now, uv works the same way venv does - i.e. creates a python environment for the project or directory you’re actively in.

So much so, that if you’re in a folder say -

D:\Experiments>

The creation of a new virtual environment is using the command -

D:\Experiments> uv venv

This results in a virtual environment created inside the Experiments directory as a “.venv” directory containing the environment files (libraries, binaries etc).

This environment can then be activated using :

D:\Experiments> .venv\Scripts\activate

Resulting in

(venv) D:\Experiments>

If you’re on WSL or some flavor of Linux , only the activate step changes to -
$ source .venv/bin/activate

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