In case VIRTUAL_ENV is different from .venv UV_PROJECT_ENVIRONMENT should be created automatically

[avoutsas67]

Hi all,

If I understand correctly, the current behaviour of uv add when VIRTUAL_ENVIRONMENT is different than .venv is to raise a warning and create a .venv environment where the dependency will be created.
warning: VIRTUAL_ENV=.venv-py312does not match the project environment path.venv and will be ignored Using Python 3.12.6 interpreter at: /opt/homebrew/opt/python@3.12/bin/python3.12 Creating virtualenv at: .venv

I believe it would be more intuitive and more efficient when the VIRTUAL_ENV is different from .venv that the UV_PROJECT_ENVIRONMENT is set automatically to VIRTUAL_ENV by uv init. This will remove an extra step in setting up a project.

If a users wants to use a different environment from the one set in VIRTUAL_ENV then they could explicitly set the UV_PROJECT_ENVIRONMENT.

Thanks for considering this request.

Achilleas

[zanieb]

We intentionally don't support using the "active" virtual environment for a project.

More context in #6834 which links to much more discussion.

[sglbl]

@zanieb So how can I use my cpu-based-venv without removing the other one?

[adhadse]

Unfortunately, this doesn't allow me to keep all virtual environments at one place under ~ dir.

Currently UV_PROJECT_ENVIRONMENT only allow me to configure for one project.

I usually name project environments with the same name as project and keep them under one folder in ~/uv_environments.

[zanieb]

@adhadse that's tracked in #1495

@sglbl we don't really support that yet. You can hack it with UV_PROJECT_ENVIRONMENT but there's not a way to define multiple persistent environments. We're thinking about it, but there can be 2^N environments (N = number of groups + extras + resolution modes) for each project and we don't want to just store every combination ever created.

[mgu]

@adhadse for this specific use case, I use direnv and export UV_PROJECT_ENVIRONMENT in my .envrc. I don't know if this is something that could help you

[adhadse]

Right now, I'm not interested in fiddling with this issue. I'm going with how uv does it. I'll come back to it later once I start using uv with more and more projects.