Consider top level command for installing tools

[daviewales]

Currently with pipx, I can run:

pipx install black

And I get black on my path.

I can also do:

pipx run black

And it runs black, but doesn't install it to my path. uv tool install appears to do the same thing as pipx install. And uvx black appears to do the same as pipx run black. But I wonder if it would make more sense to mirror the pipx command structure more closely?

Perhaps:

uvx --install black

could be equivalent to

uv tool install black

This allows you to keep the current functionality of uvx black to run `black without installing.

There are also currently no Python packages called install, so you could get away with:

uvx install black

But this is a bit confusing, so maybe don't do that unless you completely adopt the pipx semantics.

Alternatively, if you really want to keep the simplicity of uvx black, perhaps you could add a similar shortcut for installing? Something like:

uvi black

Or

uvxi black

[zanieb]

Thanks for the detailed description!

I don't see a particular value in mirroring pipx closely, we already have uv tool which roughly mirrors this with uv tool run and uv tool install. What's the benefit in a shorter installation invocation? If it's critical in your workflow maybe alias uvi="uv tool install" makes sense?

Note that we match other tools here, for example, npx also optimizes for running a command quickly.

[daviewales]

I guess my thought is that for a tool in the Python ecosystem, it makes sense to match existing Python tools.

For example:

pip install
pip uninstall
pipx install
pipx uninstall

uv is the odd one out here.

pipx is a gentle adaptation of my existing mental model. I know how to pip install things. Now I can pipx install things, and it's exactly like pip install, but with isolated environments, etc.

uv breaks that mental model by copying a package manager from a different ecosystem.

I understand that you are trying to do a lot with a single tool, so I understand why you need an extra command level in the base uv tool.

But uvx is intended to be a shortcut for this tool.

You ask "What's the benefit in a shorter installation invocation?"

For me, yes it's nice to type a few less characters. But more importantly, it matches the existing mental model of everyone who's ever used pip. You just replace pip with pipx, uvx, etc, and carry on with faster installs, dependency isolation, and so on.

[zanieb]

uv breaks that mental model by copying a package manager from a different ecosystem.

To be clear, we didn't copy this other package manager. We assessed interfaces like this in every ecosystem and then decided on an interface that makes the most sense for us.

We have to worry about people being confused about if they should use uvx install, uv tool install, uv pip install, and uv add — it doesn't sound worth it.

Sorry, but we have to focus on correctness things right now and even if we were amenable to this it'd be low priority.