Evok (ev)

Pure-Python high-performance package manager and zero-venv virtualization runtime.

Evok demonstrates that a clean-slate Python implementation leveraging modern OS primitives and stdlib capabilities can reach ~80% of uv's speed while delivering native capabilities that compiled binaries cannot provide: first-class in-process APIs, zero-venv sys.meta_path virtualization, dynamic AST dependency inference, and single-file zero-binary .pyz bootstrapping.

Key Highlights

• Zero-Copy Reflink Cache: Unpacks wheels once into a global cache and installs in milliseconds using macOS APFS clonefile, Linux FICLONE, and hardlink (os.link) fallbacks.
• Bit-Packed PEP 440 Arithmetic: Encodes release segments and lifecycle stages into single 64-bit scalar integers for microsecond comparisons.
• Async Metadata & Range Tail-Reads: Fetches package metadata from remote ZIP central directories using HTTP Range requests without downloading full wheels.
• Zero-Venv Virtualization: Run code with in-process sys.meta_path hooks that load dependencies directly from the cache without creating a .venv directory on disk.
• AST Dependency Scanner: Scans project source code to automatically detect third-party imports, flag missing packages, and prune unused/dead dependencies.
• Pure-Python Wheel & Sdist Builder: Standards-compliant PEP 427 wheel generator, PEP 625 sdist packager, and single-file .pyz executable bundler.

Quickstart

Installation

Evok runs on Python 3.12+ with zero external runtime dependencies:

# Using uv
uv pip install evok

# Or via pip
pip install evok

Command-Line Usage (ev)

# Initialize a new project
ev init my-app

# Inspect AST imports and compare with pyproject.toml
ev scan

# Automatically prune unused dependencies
ev prune

# Build standard wheel, sdist, and standalone zipapp
ev build --zipapp

# Run a script with in-process zero-venv dependency virtualization
ev run script.py

# Check platform reflink support and runtime info
ev info

Programmatic Python API

Evok is built as a first-class Python library:

from evok import Environment, InMemoryProvider, Resolver

# 1. Dependency Resolution
provider = InMemoryProvider(
    {
        "httpx": {"0.27.0": ["httpcore>=1.0.0"]},
        "httpcore": {"1.0.5": []},
    }
)
resolver = Resolver(provider=provider)
graph = resolver.resolve(["httpx>=0.24.0"])
print(graph.get("httpx").version)  # 0.27.0

# 2. Ephemeral Zero-Venv Execution
with Environment.ephemeral(graph) as env:
    mod = env.import_module("httpx")

Documentation

• System Architecture
• CLI Reference
• Python API Reference
• Performance & Bottleneck Analysis
• Implementation Plan

License

MIT License.