Clarify interaction of --group and default dev dependencies

[rsyring]

Question

Considering dependency groups like:

[dependency-groups]
dev = [
    {include-group = "tests"},
    'hatch>=1.14.0',
    'pip-audit',
    'ruff>=0.9.6',
]
tests = [
    'nox>=2025.2.9',
    'pytest>=8.3.4',
]

When prepping for test runs in nox, I'd expect to be able to do:

uv sync --group tests

But with that invocation, the dev dependency group is also included. My next attempt was:

uv sync --only-group tests

But that doesn't include the project's dependencies either, which doesn't work for testing. So my final attempt is:

uv sync --no-dev --group tests

Which works but seems clunky. IMO, it would be more intuitive if:

# install project + group tests
uv sync --group tests

# install project + group tests and group dev
uv sync --group dev --group tests

And if I always want dev installed when tests is installed then I use include-group to make that happen instead of relying on implicit dev install.

IMO, uv isn't currently using the dev group as a default. A default implies it's the selection unless something else is chosen. I think if uv adjusted it to be a true default, the ux might be better.

Also, FWIW, that there are seven different CLI options for dealing with dependency groups. Does that seem like a lot to anyone else?

As always, YMMV. :)

Thanks.

Platform

Ubuntu 24.04 x64

Version

0.6.2

[T-256]

IIUC, You mean using --group should disable tool.uv.default-groups functionality. I'm favor of that then 👍