python-update-checker

Python-update-checker (puc) checks or updates pinned dependencies in pyproject.toml, requirements.txt or uv.lock files.

If you are developing an application you should pin all dependencies. When developing a library, only development dependencies should be pinned. Since puc updates pinned dependencies, it is mostly suitable when developing applications.

See [https://github.com/astral-sh/uv/issues/6794] for a discussion about different pinning strategies.

Quickstart

# update dependencies in pyproject.toml to the latest version
uvx --from python-update-checker puc --exclude-newer="7 days" update pyproject.toml
# install updated dependencies in virtual environment
uv sync

Features

• updates pinned dependencies, ignores unpinned dependencies
• supports pyproject.toml, uv.lock and requirements.txt formats
• supports [project.dependencies], [project.optional-dependencies] and [dependency-groups] in pyproject.toml
• supports legacy dependency format [tool.uv.dev-dependencies] in pyproject.toml
• supports recursive references (-r) in requirements.txt formats
• can run in check only mode, ie. it checks if updates are available
• limit updates to specific packages
• can ignore packages
• limit updates with package version constraints (ie. "django<6")
• limit updates to versions that were uploaded prior to a given date
• (limited) support for environment markers, ie. "pywin32==311; os_name=='nt'"
• runs on Linux, MacOS and Windows platforms

Examples

$ # check all pinned packages for updates in pyproject.toml
$ puc check pyproject.toml
puc INFO: check pyproject file pyproject.toml
puc WARNING: found update 'ty==0.0.29' --> 0.0.32

$ # update all pinned packages in pyproject.toml
$ # limit updates to versions that are at least 7 days old
$ puc --exclude-newer="7 days" update pyproject.toml
puc INFO: update pyproject file pyproject.toml
puc INFO: updating 'ty==0.0.29' --> 0.0.31
puc INFO: Wrote 1 updated package version(s) to pyproject.toml
$ # update the project environment after upgrading pyproject.toml
$ uv sync

$ # check all pinned packages for updates in requirements.txt
$ puc check requirements.txt
puc INFO: check requirements file requirements.txt
puc WARNING: found update 'argcomplete==3.6.1' --> 3.6.3
puc WARNING: found update 'Django==5.2.0' --> 6.0.4

$ # update only the django package version in requirements.txt
$ # limit updates to django versions less than 6
$ puc --package="Django" --constraints="Django<6" update requirements.txt
puc INFO: update requirements file requirements.txt
puc INFO: updating 'Django==5.2.0' --> 5.2.13
puc INFO: Wrote 1 updated package version(s) to requirements.txt

Script behaviour

The exit code of puc check is non-zero when updates are available.

Checking a pyproject.toml or uv.lockfile with puc should be done from the directory of the pyproject.toml file, especially if your project relies on a project directory (for example to define additional package indexes in pyproject.toml).

After updating versions in pyproject.toml, run uv lock --upgrade to update the transitive dependencies in uv.lock and uv sync to update your virtual environment.

Pinned dependencies are packages with == or === constraints and no wildcards in the version.

Installation

1. Install python uv
2. Install puc with uv pip install python-update-checker or run with uvx --from python-update-checker puc ...

Architecture

Dependencies are

• uv: The uv binary must be available for the script to call.
  puc uses echo "package" | uv pip compile - to get latest package versions.
  puc uses uv add "package==<version>" to update pyproject.toml dependencies and uv lock --upgrade-package to update uv.lock dependencies.

• packaging: Parses dependencies with the packaging.requirements.Requirement class.

puc needs Python >= 3.11 since it uses the tomllib Python module.

Updating minimum version requirements

Dependencies like requests>=1.12 or django>5 specify a minimum version requirement.

Minimum requirements are necessary to work with different versioned dependencies, since different distributions package different versions of those dependencies. Minimum requirements change when the project uses a feature that is only available in newer versions of a dependency. This cannot be determined automatically by puc. So minimum version requirements should be updated manually.

Limitations

• No support for custom dependency formats in pyproject.toml (eg. [tool.poetry.dependencies]).
• puc has limited support for environment markers.
• Constraint references (-c) inside requirements.txt are not supported.
  Use the --constraints option instead.