Astral vs setuptools

Astral makes open-source tools for Python development, including Ruff, a linter, and uv, a package and project manager. Both are written in Rust. uv brings together project management, a universal lockfile, script execution, Python version management, tool installation, workspaces and a pip-compatible interface. Astral describes that interface as providing a 10–100x speedup over pip. uv supports macOS, Linux and Windows. Its documented integrations include Docker, Jupyter, marimo, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, pre-commit, PyTorch, FastAPI, Bazel, artifact registries, Renovate, Dependabot, AWS Lambda and Coiled. Astral says its tools are permissively licensed and free forever. It describes security controls for workflows and releases, including read-only default workflow permissions, full-length commit-SHA pinning, Trusted Publishing, Sigstore attestations and immutable GitHub releases. Documentation directs users to its Discord community for support. The separate pyx package registry offers optimized installs and other package-management features, but is no longer accepting new signups. Astral has announced an agreement to join OpenAI as part of the Codex team.

setuptools is a free Python packaging library for preparing projects for sharing and installation. It can serve as a project build backend, discover packages and namespaces, and let maintainers control which packages are distributed. It handles build-system requirements plus required and optional dependencies, including version limits and environment markers, and supports dependency groups. Configured entry points can generate console-command and plugin scripts during installation. Editable installs apply source changes without rebuilding and reinstalling. The library can build C and C++ extension modules, and its documentation covers workflows with pip, build, and PyPI. Setuptools runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, while the current PyPI listing requires Python 3.10 or later. The project identifies modern PyPA-standard APIs and documented customization APIs as its most stable interfaces. It is free, has no free trial, and professional support is available through a Tidelift Subscription.