what is container called cookiecutter-django-uv-runner:latest doing? apart from the obvious...

[millerthegorilla]

Hi, just installed cookiecutter for a new project, and am running two other projects that are slightly older, although I installed from cookiecutter recently for one of them and didn't see this container being created.
I can't find anything in the docs about it, and I know django-cookiecutter has been switching over to using uv, which I applaud, having witnessed an incredible speed increase over pip, but I would like to know what the cookiecutter-django-uv-runner does and how to best use it...will it automatically update my uv lock file when I upgrade a github requirement :) ?
Any hints?
mtia...

[foarsitter]

See it in action over here: https://github.com/cookiecutter/cookiecutter-django/blob/main/hooks/post_gen_project.py#L521-L547

It basically pipes all the files in /requirements to uv so it can add them to pyproject.toml and generates a lockfile.

[millerthegorilla]

Thanks. I am still acclimatising to uv. I am currently running, on my production server, when I have made a change to the github repo for the app, docker compose -f etc ... run --rm django uv lock --upgrade, and then rebuilding the production docker stack. Does this new container offer up a different/easier way to achieve the same thing?

[Ebikemeese]

Answer:

The cookiecutter-django-uv-runner is a small utility that comes with the latest Cookiecutter Django projects to manage your virtual environment using uv. It mainly helps with:

1. Running your Django project in a consistent containerized environment.
2. Installing and updating dependencies using uv instead of pip.
3. Keeping your uv.lock file synchronized with installed packages.

However, it does not automatically update your uv.lock when you upgrade a GitHub requirement. You should explicitly run:

uv update <package>

or

uv sync

to update the lock file after adding or upgrading dependencies. This ensures the uv.lock file stays consistent and reproducible across environments.

In short:

• uv-runner = convenience wrapper for running Django + uv environment
• It does not auto-update the lock file, you control updates manually

Example usage:

1. Create a new project using Cookiecutter Django

cookiecutter gh:pydanny/cookiecutter-django

2. Navigate into the project

cd myproject

3. Run the project using uv-runner

uv-runner runserver

4. Install dependencies from requirements.txt (via uv)

uv install

5. If you upgrade a GitHub dependency:

uv update # updates the package
uv sync # updates uv.lock accordingly