Puppy - wrapper and recipes for pixi+uv

[liquidcarbon]

Puppy wants to be your new best friend in the Python world!
https://github.com/liquidcarbon/puppy

Pup is a single script that transparently wraps around two powerful Rust-based package managers, Pixi and uv. It seems to me like they complement each other, and belong together. Think of puppy as a (thus far) missing recipe for using Pixi and uv together (or just as their fur baby, if you're so inclined).

Puppy was a long plane ride idea around the following design criteria for practical and modern python ecosystem:

• base python should be:
  • not system python
  • non-invasive, isolated from any existing python, easy to setup and tear down so that people aren't apprehensive about trying them
  • easy to swap versions (up or down as needed)
  • bring along tools needed for other languages
• environments should be
  • super easy, oneliner-easy, to create, use, modify, freeze, take down
  • reside in the same folder as the base python rather than all over
  • easily ported to other machines or containers
• the whole thing
  • should work on Linux and Windows
  • should support Conda and PyPI
  • should be easy to recreate without relying on memory or Bash history

As you can see, Pixi handles almost all crucial steps here - huge thanks for all your work!

Essentially, it's a recipe for a two-tiered environment. The outer tier, managed by Pixi, is tied to one specific python executable. The inner environments are managed by uv. If you need a different version of python (e.g. #833) , you could overwrite the inner-layer python with pup or pixi, but I suspect this can bite you in the ass later, so better to start over in a different folder.

So far it's a bash script, I'll try to port it to Powershell soon.

From zero python to multi-kernel Jupyter in 7 commands:

 ./pup
 pup py3.12 jupyter
 pup fetch . httpx
 pup fetch viz altair seaborn
 pup kernel . pup3.11-.
 pup kernel viz pup3.11-viz
 pup play

From zero python to running Gradio app:

./pup
pup py3.11
pup fetch huggingface gradio
pup kernel huggingface pup3.11-hf
# edit huggingface/app.py
pup play  # via pixi run task huggingface/.venv/bin/gradio app.py

If you'd like to try it out and offer feedback, it would be very much appreciated!