vra / rye

an experimental alternative to poetry/pip/pipenv/pyenv/venv/virtualenv/pdm/hatch/…

Rye

Rye is Armin's personal one-stop-shop for all his Python needs. It installs and manages Python installations, manages pyproject.toml files, installs and uninstalls dependencies, manages virtualenvs behind the scenes. It supports monorepos and global tool installations.

It is a wish of what Python was, with no guarantee to work for anyone else. It's an exploration, and it's far from perfect. Thus also the question: Should it exist?

Click on the thumbnail to watch a 9 minute introduction video

Learn more:

• Documentation
• Issue Tracker
• Discussions

Installation

Rye is built in Rust. There is no binary distribution yet, it works on Linux, macOS and Windows as of today:

$ cargo install --git https://github.com/mitsuhiko/rye rye

To use rye for automatic management, you first need to create a new project using rye init:

$ rye init my_project && cd my_project

Once that's done, you can follow these steps to enjoy the benefits of automated management:

$ rye sync

If you want to choose a specific version of Python, you can use the rye pin command to specify the version you need (optionally):

$ rye pin cpython@3.11

That's it! You can now easily achieve automatic management and switch between different versions of Python as needed.

The virtualenv that rye manages is placed in .venv next to your pyproject.toml. You can activate and work with it as normal with one notable exception: the Python installation in it does not contain pip.

Note that python will by default just be your regular Python. To have it automatically pick up the right Python without manually activating the virtualenv, you can add ~/.rye/shims to your PATH at higher preference than normal. If you operate outside of a rye managed project, the regular Python is picked up automatically. For the global tool installation you need to add the shims to the path.

Some of the things it does

It automatically installs and manages Python:

$ rye pin 3.11
$ rye run python
Python 3.11.1 (main, Jan 16 2023, 16:02:03) [Clang 15.0.7 ] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Note that does mean, that Rye will automatically download and install an appropriate Python binary for you. These Python binaries are currently pulled from the indygreg python-build-standalone releases.

Install tools in isolation globally:

$ rye install maturin

Manage dependencies of a local pyproject.toml and update the virtualenv automatically:

$ rye add flask
$ rye sync

Decisions Made

To understand why things are the way they are:

• Virtualenvs: while I personally do not like virtualenvs that much, they are so widespread and have reasonable tooling support, so I chose this over __pypackages__.

• No Default Dependencies: the virtualenvs when they come up are completely void of dependencies. Not even pip or setuptools are installed into it. Rye manages the virtualenv from outside the virtualenv.

• No Core Non Standard Stuff: Rye (with the exception of it's own tool section in the pyproject.toml) uses standardized keys. That means it uses regular requirements as you would expect. It also does not use a custom lock file format and uses pip-tools behind the scenes.

• No Pip: Rye uses pip, but it does not expose it. It manage dependencies in pyproject.toml only.

• No System Python: I can't deal with any more linux distribution weird Python installations or whatever mess there is on macOS. I used to build my own Pythons that are the same everywhere, now I use indygreg's Python builds. Rye will automatically download and manage Python builds from there. No compiling, no divergence.

• Project Local Shims: Rye maintains a python shim that auto discovers the current pyproject.toml and automatically operates below it. Just add the shims to your shell and you can run python and it will automatically always operate in the right project.

Python Distributions

Rye does not use system python installations. Instead it uses Gregory Szorc's standalone Python builds: python-build-standalone. This is done to create a unified experience of Python installations and to avoid incompatibilities created by different Python distributions. Most importantly this also means you never need to compile a Python any more, it just downloads prepared binaries.

Global Tools

If you want tools to be installed into isolated virtualenvs (like pipsi and pipx), you can use rye too (requires ~/.rye/shims to be on the path):

$ rye install pycowsay
$ pycowsay Wow

  ---
< Wow >
  ---
   \   ^__^
    \  (oo)\_______
       (__)\       )\/\
           ||----w |
           ||     ||

To uninstall run rye uninstall pycowsay again.

License: MIT