What is rye?

Rye was a tool for managing Python projects from one command-line interface. It handled installing Python itself, creating isolated project environments, managing package dependencies, running code formatters and linters, and building packages for distribution. The goal was to give Python developers a single tool that covered the full project lifecycle without needing to coordinate several separate tools. Important note: Rye is no longer actively developed. The same team that built it now maintains a successor called uv, which they describe as more capable and more widely used. The README explicitly recommends that all users switch to uv and provides a migration guide. Rye will remain available for download but will receive no further updates, including security fixes. For anyone still reviewing the project historically: Rye automatically downloaded Python from pre-built binaries, managed virtual environments (isolated folders that keep each project's packages separate), and used a standard configuration file format called pyproject.toml to track project settings and dependencies. It bundled a fast linting and formatting tool called Ruff and used uv itself for dependency installation. It also supported monorepo setups, where a single repository contains multiple related packages. Installation on Linux and macOS was a single command in the terminal. Windows users downloaded an installer file. The documentation and website remain online. If you are starting a new Python project today, the README's guidance is to use uv rather than Rye.