Cargo vs uv

Cargo is the free package manager and build tool for Rust, used through a command-line interface. It downloads dependencies, builds packages, and supports repeatable builds with lockfiles. Developers can compile, check, document, test, run, package, install, and publish Rust projects. The `cargo new` command creates a package, defaulting to a binary; adding `--lib` creates a library. Cargo uses crates.io by default and also handles alternate registries, Git dependencies, and local paths. Workspaces allow multiple packages to share a lockfile and output directory. Package features can enable conditional compilation and optional dependencies. In offline mode, Cargo avoids network access and attempts to use cached data. It supports authentication options for registries and new subcommands without modifying Cargo itself. Rustup installs Cargo with the stable Rust release, and installation instructions cover Windows, macOS, Linux, and other Unix-like systems. Cargo is open source under the MIT and Apache License, Version 2.0. Some documented capabilities remain unstable and require a nightly toolchain and `-Z` flags.

uv is a Python package and project manager for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Written in Rust, it manages dependencies and environments, with lockfiles and workspaces, and can install, list, pin, or uninstall Python versions. It also runs scripts with dependencies and runs or installs command-line tools from Python packages. Its pip-compatible interface is intended to cover work done by tools such as pip, pip-tools, pipx, poetry, pyenv, twine, and virtualenv, though its commands do not exactly match those tools. The documentation describes uv as 10–100x faster than pip. It supports source distributions, wheels, requirements.txt, and pylock.toml, as well as offline installation and private registry authentication. For package selection, its default first-index strategy limits candidates to the first index where a package is found. Credentials are not stored in uv.lock, but uv currently stores them in a plaintext file; native system secret storage is an experimental preview. The free plan is free.