UV Global Environment Manager

Bring the convenience of reusable global environments to the speed and simplicity of UV, with seamless multi-shell and cross-platform support.

UV provides an excellent project-oriented workflow, but not every Python task needs its own project. This tool brings the convenience of reusable global environments to UV, allowing you to create, manage, and quickly switch between isolated environments for experimentation, automation, utilities, development tools, and other recurring tasks.

Built with native integration for Windows and Linux designed to work across the same shells supported by UV, it provides a consistent workflow without relying on platform-specific scripts. When an experiment grows into a real project, the active environment can also be used as the starting point for a standard UV project, making the transition from experimentation to development straightforward.

Installation

UV must be installed and available globally through the system PATH.

The recommended way to install UV Global Environment Manager is through UV's tool management:

uv tool install uv-global-manager
uv tool update-shell

Once installed, the uve command will be available globally.

Run uve setup to configure the shell integration and explore the available setup options.

Why Global Virtual Environments?

Not every Python task needs a dedicated project. Reusable environments are useful whenever you need an isolated, persistent Python environment for a specific purpose.

Many everyday tasks do not belong to a dedicated project:

• Testing new Python libraries.
• Running utility scripts.
• Experimenting with new technologies.
• Maintaining automation tools.
• Building dedicated data science environments.
• Keeping separate environments for different Python versions.
• Creating specialized environments with pre-installed applications such as Spyder, Jupyter, or scientific libraries.

For example, a dedicated environment can provide a Python-based workflow similar to MATLAB by installing Spyder and the required scientific libraries. Other environments can be tailored to any of the use cases above, with each environment remaining fully isolated from the system Python while being immediately available whenever needed.

Reusable environments therefore complement project-specific environments by providing persistent, purpose-built Python installations for tasks that do not require a dedicated project.

Features

• Manage reusable global virtual environments (create, activate, list, and remove).
• Bootstrap standard UV projects from the active environment.
• Support Windows and Linux.
• Support the same shells supported by UV.
• Provide native shell integration across supported platforms.
• Automatically initialize and maintain the required manager infrastructure.

Available Commands

The CLI provides dedicated commands for managing environments, integrating with the current shell, and transitioning from reusable environments to standard UV projects. Run uve help <command> to view the complete help, including available options and examples for any command.

Acknowledgments

This project would not be possible without:

• Shellingham, by Tzu-ping Chung.