A plea not to use uv-build for Python (blogs.gentoo.org)

submitted 1 week ago by bignose@programming.dev to c/python@programming.dev

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

@mgorny@treehouse.systems:

After seeing yet another dozen packages lose keywords on Gentoo because of a single key dependency switching to uv-build, I would like to plea on behalf of Gentoo users: please don’t use uv-build as a build backend.

Just to be clear, this is not about uv itself or any other Astral tools; these are good tools with a nice and responsive upstream. The uv-build backend is one thing we have to disagree on. I’m not saying it’s bad; I’m saying that its benefits don’t outweigh the drawbacks.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] psyq@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago

Somewhat of a side discussion, but these aren't the only issues you can have when using uv-build.

While it's stable now, it expects certain directory layouts and can only be used on pure Python projects. If you need anything else, you are better off using hatchling anyway, which used to be the default even for uv.

This is also why some of your old uv-based projects might build fine and the same code won't build in a modern uv project; they switched the default.

Here's a thing directly from the authors:

While the backend supports a number of options for configuring your project structure, when build scripts or a more flexible project layout are required, consider using the hatchling build backend instead.

Source