This document covers environment activation, tool directory configuration, and authentication options.
You can set activate-environment to true to automatically activate a venv.
This allows directly using it in later steps:
- name: Install the latest version of uv and activate the environment
uses: step-security/setup-uv@v7
with:
activate-environment: true
- run: uv pip install pipBy default, the venv is created at .venv inside the working-directory.
You can customize the venv location with venv-path, for example to place it in the runner temp directory:
- uses: astral-sh/setup-uv@v7
with:
activate-environment: true
venv-path: ${{ runner.temp }}/custom-venvWarning
Activating the environment adds your dependencies to the PATH, which could break some workflows.
For example, if you have a dependency which requires uv, e.g., hatch, activating the
environment will shadow the uv binary installed by this action and may result in a different uv
version being used.
We do not recommend using this setting for most use-cases. Instead, use uv run to execute
commands in the environment.
This action uses the GitHub API to fetch the uv release artifacts. To avoid hitting the GitHub API
rate limit too quickly, an authentication token can be provided via the github-token input. By
default, the GITHUB_TOKEN secret is used, which is automatically provided by GitHub Actions.
If the default permissions for the GitHub token are not sufficient, you can provide a custom GitHub token with the necessary permissions.
- name: Install the latest version of uv with a custom GitHub token
uses: step-security/setup-uv@v7
with:
github-token: ${{ secrets.CUSTOM_GITHUB_TOKEN }}On Windows UV_TOOL_DIR is set to uv-tool-dir in the TMP dir (e.g. D:\a\_temp\uv-tool-dir).
On GitHub hosted runners this is on the much faster D: drive.
On all other platforms the tool environments are placed in the default location.
If you want to change this behaviour (especially on self-hosted runners) you can use the tool-dir
input:
- name: Install the latest version of uv with a custom tool dir
uses: step-security/setup-uv@v7
with:
tool-dir: "/path/to/tool/dir"On Windows UV_TOOL_BIN_DIR is set to uv-tool-bin-dir in the TMP dir (e.g.
D:\a\_temp\uv-tool-bin-dir). On GitHub hosted runners this is on the much faster D: drive. This
path is also automatically added to the PATH.
On all other platforms the tool binaries get installed to the default location.
If you want to change this behaviour (especially on self-hosted runners) you can use the
tool-bin-dir input:
- name: Install the latest version of uv with a custom tool bin dir
uses: step-security/setup-uv@v7
with:
tool-bin-dir: "/path/to/tool-bin/dir"This action supports expanding the ~ character to the user's home directory for the following inputs:
version-filecache-local-pathtool-dirtool-bin-dircache-dependency-glob
- name: Expand the tilde character
uses: step-security/setup-uv@v7
with:
cache-local-path: "~/path/to/cache"
tool-dir: "~/path/to/tool/dir"
tool-bin-dir: "~/path/to/tool-bin/dir"
cache-dependency-glob: "~/my-cache-buster"By default, the action will warn if the workdir is empty, because this is usually the case when
actions/checkout is configured to run after setup-uv, which is not supported.
If you want to ignore this, set the ignore-empty-workdir input to true.
- name: Ignore empty workdir
uses: step-security/setup-uv@v7
with:
ignore-empty-workdir: trueThis action sets several environment variables that influence uv's behavior and can be used by subsequent steps:
UV_PYTHON: Set whenpython-versioninput is specified. Controls which Python version uv uses.UV_CACHE_DIR: Set when caching is enabled (unless already configured in uv config files). Controls where uv stores its cache.UV_TOOL_DIR: Set whentool-dirinput is specified. Controls where uv installs tool environments.UV_TOOL_BIN_DIR: Set whentool-bin-dirinput is specified. Controls where uv installs tool binaries.UV_PYTHON_INSTALL_DIR: Always set. Controls where uv installs Python versions.VIRTUAL_ENV: Set whenactivate-environmentis true. Points to the activated virtual environment.
Environment variables that affect the action behavior:
UV_NO_MODIFY_PATH: If set, prevents the action from modifying PATH. Cannot be used withactivate-environment.UV_CACHE_DIR: If already set, the action will respect it instead of setting its own cache directory.
- name: Example using environment variables
uses: step-security/setup-uv@v7
with:
python-version: "3.12"
tool-dir: "/custom/tool/dir"
enable-cache: true
- name: Check environment variables
run: |
echo "UV_PYTHON: $UV_PYTHON"
echo "UV_CACHE_DIR: $UV_CACHE_DIR"
echo "UV_TOOL_DIR: $UV_TOOL_DIR"
echo "UV_PYTHON_INSTALL_DIR: $UV_PYTHON_INSTALL_DIR"