uv integration
This feature is considered in a preview stage and is under active development. It can change significantly, or be removed completely. It is not considered ready for production use.
To make development easier, particularly with multiple projects, dg integrates with the uv package manager.
We are working on streamlining the configuration of the uv integration, and it
is likely to change in the next few releases.
Default dg behavior (uv run)
dg itself is installed globally and always executes in an isolated environment. However, many dg commands need to spawn subprocesses in environments scoped to specific projects. For example, when you run dg list component-type in a project directory, dg only lists the component types available in that project.
When using dg with default settings, the Python subprocess is spawned after detecting a virtual environment in the project directory. This means that, rather than finding the first python executable on your shell PATH, it will instead use the Python executable from a locally detected virtual environment even if that virtual environment is not currently activated.
By default, dg uses a special uv command called uv run for environment detection and command execution. uv run resolves a local virtual environment (.venv in an ancestor directory) before running a command, and additionally makes sure that the environment is up to date with the project's specified dependencies before running the command.
dg's use of uv run means you don't need to manage global shell state by activating and deactivating virtual environments during development. Instead, dg expects (and will scaffold for you) a .venv directory in the root of each project, and will use that virtual environment when executing commands (such as dg scaffold defs or dg list component-type) against that project.
Disabling use of uv run
You can disable dg's use of uv run by passing the --no-use-dg-managed-environment flag to dg commands. This will cause dg to still try to resolve local virtual environments by looking up the ancestor tree for .venv, but instead launch Python processes directly rather than going through uv run.
If you want to opt out of virtual environment detection entirely and just use your ambient Python environment (system Python or an activated virtual env), you should also (a) set --no-require-local-venv, and (b) ensure there are no .venv directories in
the ancestor tree of your project.
Disabling uv integration with --no-use-dg-managed-environment will
currently disable the dg cache. This will make some operations noticeably slower.