Package dependency is not installed from local checkout

[Dronakurl]

Issue summary

I defined a dependency using a local path as source.
However, the package is not installed after syncing.
The same package can be installed from the git repo without a problem.

Reproducible steps

(The section below shows the steps in a Dockerfile and its output)

1. Create an empty directory.
2. Place this pyproject.toml inside it

[project]
name = "uvproblem"
version = "0.1.0"
description = ""
readme = ""
requires-python = ">=3.12"
dependencies = ["xobjects"]

[tool.uv.sources]
xobjects = { path = "/tmp/xobjects/" }

3. Download the github repo to the source location in the /tmp folder

git clone https://github.com/xsuite/xobjects /tmp/xobjects

4. Run uv sync -U -v. Result: (https://pastebin.com/Zxrt0UiA).
   I expected the package to be installed. But uv installed only it's dependencies.

5. Check with uv pip show xobjects -> Package not found

What I tried to check any issues with this particular package

1. Use git source instead:

   • Change the source in pyproject to be:

     xobjects = { git = "https://github.com/xsuite/xobjects" }

   • Re-run uv sync -U -v

   • Result (as expected): The xobjects package is installed.

2. Install it directly:

   • uv pip install /tmp/xobjects/
   • Check (as expected): The xobjects package is installed. (uv pip show xobjects)

3. After manual installation (and with the local path in pyproject.toml), sync again, to see if the package is kept in the environment

   • uv sync -U -v
   • Log says it's an "unnecessary package".

Dockerfile

You can find a Dockerfile with the above steps here: (https://pastebin.com/jNwH4HZL)

The output can be found here: (https://pastebin.com/M7vLMGR0)

Platform

Ubuntu 24.04, linux x86_64

Version

0.5.29

[charliermarsh]

Sorry, can you create a minimal reproduction that we can use to debug your issue? Ideally, a Git repo or a zip archive or similar that we can download, along with the exact command you ran, what you expected to see, and what you saw in practice.

[zanieb]

See #9452 and https://docs.astral.sh/uv/reference/troubleshooting/reproducible-examples/ please.

[Dronakurl]

Sorry, I thought the question was clear enough and there is an easy explanation.
I changed the issue doing my very best to make the MRE.

[charliermarsh]

Thanks! We'll take a look.

[charliermarsh]

Hmm ok. The issue here is that xobjects doesn't include a build system, so we treat it as a virtual project.

[Dronakurl]

Thanks for looking into it! But isn't it weird that it works with a git source but not with the local checkout?

[zanieb]

Thank you so much for taking the time to make a complete reproduction.

We have different logic for remote sources (like Git) and local sources (like a directory).

@charliermarsh it seems wrong to treat this as a virtual project since it's a dependency? Shouldn't virtual projects only be allowed at the root of a workspace? Or, at the very least, as a workspace member? As an example, wouldn't the behavior be weird here with --no-sources?

[charliermarsh]

No, we allow any path dependency to be virtual.

[charliermarsh]

(We can change that, but it appears to be intentional in the code and would be breaking.)

[charliermarsh]

(At minimum, it seems like we need to allow package = true or package = false on path dependencies?)

[charliermarsh]

@zanieb -- Should we change this for path dependencies in v0.6?