Windows Server 2019 uv access is denied when executing

[Andrew-Chen-Wang]

I installed pyenv 3.12.4 in a Windows Server 2019 using AWS EC2. Created a virtualenv then tried running uv pip install -r requirements.txt. This results in

(.venv) PS C:\Users\andrew\Downloads> uv pip install bin/requirements/requirements-dev.txt
? `bin/requirements/requirements-dev.txt` looks like a local requirements file but was passed as a package name. Did you✔ `bin/requirements/requirements-dev.txt` looks like a local requirements file but was passed as a package name. Did you mean `-r bin/requirements/requirements-dev.txt`? · yes
Resolved 54 packages in 900ms
   Built tasks @ file:///C:/Users/andrew/Downloads/projects/tools/tasks
Prepared 2 packages in 7.40s
error: failed to remove file `C:\Users\andrew\Downloads\.venv\Lib\site-packages\../../Scripts/uv.exe`
  Caused by: Access is denied. (os error 5)

Running uv help works just fine.

Interesting solution

Renaming uv.exe from .venv/Scripts/uv.exe actually makes installation work

[charliermarsh]

Did you install uv into the virtual environment itself? It looks like uv is trying to uninstall itself.

[charliermarsh]

I believe this is the same as #1368.

[Andrew-Chen-Wang]

Yes, after creating a virtualenv, we did pip install uv

[charliermarsh]

Typically you would install uv globally, since uv doesn't need to be in the virtual environment in order to create it or install into it. (But it's also a known issue on Windows that uv cannot uninstall itself.)

[charliermarsh]

I'm gonna merge into that other issue, but happy to answer questions there.

[Andrew-Chen-Wang]

Ahh that's not really clear from the instructions. I assumed it's like pip where it needs to be installed in the virtualenv!

[charliermarsh]

Yeah uv will install into a currently-activated virtualenv even if it's not installed "in" the environment itself.