managing project tools with a new uv tool sync subcommand

[itcarroll]

Summary

I would like uv to help manage my frequently used tools by 1) knowing about the tools (with their version constraints and extras) used in development for a project and 2) ensuring that matching tools are available.

Example

For instance, suppose I have a pyproject.toml that includes a "tools" dependency group.

[dependency-groups]
tools = [
    "dvc[s3]>=3",
]

The name "tools" wouldn't be special, as there would be a new setting like:

[tool.uv]
install-tools = ["tools"]

When I am working in this project, I would execute the new subcommand.

$ uv tool sync

As a result, I would get

$ dvc --version
3.59.1

Which would be great, because trying to use a 2.x version of dvc or one without s3 extra would not work at all.

I'm sure there are better people than me to improve on the useage, but I hope that example demonstrates the goal. Being able to easily share the tools I want my collaborators to have available this way would help me move away from installing tools in project virtual environments, which seems common but annoying nowadays.

Thank you for a great tool!

[zanieb]

This overlaps with

• Add support for declarative tool installations (e.g., like Brewfile) #12533
• "Project level tools" from RFC: Tool management #3560

[itcarroll]

Thanks, @zanieb. It looks like uv tool sync (along with uv tool add and uv tool remove) were considered but not included in the original implementation of uv tool. Perhaps with the depency-groups table, there is now much less potential for confusion. I'm glad there is support for something similar expressed in #12533. I'll leave this open though, as I don't think my description duplicates that one. But no worries if you prefer to close this one!

[zanieb]

Yeah we sort of wanted to wait for the dependency-groups table to move forward on a design there. I think there's still some design work to be done before we can ship something, but definitely agree it will be nice to have!