Excluding a file from non-editable installs with uv sync --no-editable

[mjpieters]

I have a packaged app project with a docker image, built with uv:

RUN --mount=from=ghcr.io/astral-sh/uv:0.5.14@sha256:f0786ad49e2e684c18d38697facb229f538a6f5e374c56f54125aabe7d14b3f7,source=/uv,target=/bin/uv \
    --mount=type=cache,target=/root/.cache/uv \
    --mount=type=bind,source=uv.lock,target=uv.lock \
    --mount=type=bind,source=pyproject.toml,target=pyproject.toml \
    --mount=type=bind,source=src/,target=src/ \
    uv sync --no-group dev --no-editable

The project uses hatch as the build backend, and excludes a single file that is only used during development (a third-party tool needs to be able to import it)

[build-system]
requires = ["hatchling==1.27.0"]
build-backend = "hatchling.build"

[tool.hatch.build.targets.sdist]
exclude = [
    "src/project_name/_dev_support_plugin.py",
]

When I run uv build and inspect the sdist and wheel, the plugin file is not packaged, as intended:

% rm -rf dist/
% uv build
# ...
% tar tzvf dist/*.tar.gz | grep plugin 
# no output
% zipinfo dist/*.whl | grep plugin
# no output

However, the docker image does include the file, the .venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/project_name/_dev_support_plugin.py exists and is importable.

I expected that uv would have used the build backend to create the source distribution for such installs, but that's apparently not the case.

To simplify and debug, I next used uv sync locally to verify this isn't specific to docker:

% uv sync --no-group dev --no-editable
...
% ls .venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/project_name/ | grep plugin
_dev_support_plugin.py

I then also tried to run the above with --reinstall and --no-cache with the same results. I also tried excluding the file by adding a [tool.hatch.build.targets.wheel] section with the same exclude configuration, but this makes no difference either.

Is there any way I can exclude files from being installed when using --no-editable or should I relocate the plugin to some other place and add that to the import path for the 3rd-party tool to import?

[charliermarsh]

We do use the same build frontend to build the distribution for such installs, so I would expect the file to be excluded there too. Can you provide a full reproduction, like a Git repo that I can clone and run? It's a fairly bespoke setup so it's a lot of work for me to reproduce it myself.

[mjpieters]

We do use the same build frontend to build the distribution for such installs, so I would expect the file to be excluded there too. Can you provide a full reproduction, like a Git repo that I can clone and run? It's a fairly bespoke setup so it's a lot of work for me to reproduce it myself.

It's an open source project but I haven't committed the work for this yet (I'm dithering on a GraphQL dev pipeline, the plugin is for a code generator): https://github.com/mjpieters/pyright-analysis-action. So, not yet?

But, I found it easy enough to create a stand-alone test for this; here is the reproducer, with bash functions to do test the issue:

mkdir /tmp/reproducer
cd /tmp/reproducer
uv init --vcs none --python 3.13 --package --name reproducer
>>pyproject.toml cat << EOF

[tool.hatch.build.targets.sdist]
exclude = [
    "src/reproducer/dontinclude.py",
]
EOF
touch src/reproducer/dontinclude.py
function test_dists {
    rm -rf dist/; uv build
    if tar tzvf dist/reproducer-0.1.0.tar.gz| grep -q dontinclude; then echo -e '\033[1;31mFAILED\033[0m'; return; fi
    if zipinfo dist/reproducer-0.1.0-py3-none-any.whl| grep -q dontinclude; then echo -e '\033[1;31mFAILED\033[0m'; return; fi
    echo -e '\033[1;32mSUCCESS\033[0m'
}
function test_uv_sync {
    rm -rf .venv
    uv sync --no-editable --no-cache
    if [ -f .venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/reproducer/dontinclude.py ]; then echo -e '\033[1;31mFAILED\033[0m'; return; fi
    echo -e '\033[1;32mSUCCESS\033[0m'
}

You can then verify that dontinclude.py is not part of the sdist or wheel artefacts by invoking the test_dists function:

% test_dists
Building source distribution...
Building wheel from source distribution...
Successfully built dist/reproducer-0.1.0.tar.gz
Successfully built dist/reproducer-0.1.0-py3-none-any.whl
SUCCESS

and finally, verify that uv sync --no-editable does include the file with the test_uv_sync function:

% test_uv_sync
Creating virtual environment at: .venv
Resolved 1 package in 4ms
   Built reproducer @ file:///private/tmp/reproducer
Prepared 1 package in 706ms
Installed 1 package in 2ms
 + reproducer==0.1.0 (from file:///private/tmp/reproducer)
FAILED

And, as this probably matters, here's my current uv version, OS version and platform architecture:

% uv --version
uv 0.5.15 (Homebrew 2025-01-07)
% sw_vers
ProductName:		macOS
ProductVersion:		14.7.2
BuildVersion:		23H311
% arch
arm64

[mjpieters]

I note that the same issue also applies to uv run --with ., as shown by the following test command run in the same /tmp/reproducer directory:

% uv run --with . python -c 'import reproducer, os; print("\x1b[1;31mFAILED\x1b[0m" if "dontinclude.py" in os.listdir(os.path.dirname(reproducer.__file__)) else "\x1b[1;32mSUCCESS\x1b[0m")'
FAILED