Appendix A. Setting up your development environment
This appendix covers
- uv, a modern Python package manager
- Python 3.12 installation via uv
- The CrewAI CLI
- Code editor setup
- Troubleshooting common issues
Throughout this book, we assume that you have a working development environment with Python, uv, and the CrewAI CLI installed. If you ran into trouble during the setup steps in chapter 2 or you're starting fresh on a new machine, this appendix walks you through every step in detail. We'll cover all three major operating systems: macOS, Windows, and Linux.
By the end of this appendix, you will have a fully working environment that's ready for every project in this book.
A.1 Installing uv
The first thing we need is uv, the package manager that CrewAI builds on top of. If you've worked with Python before, you're probably familiar with pip and virtualenv (or venv). uv replaces both of these tools with a single, much faster alternative.
What makes uv different? It resolves and locks all dependencies in one step, writing the result to a uv.lock file. It creates and manages virtual environments for you automatically, so you never have to remember to "activate" an environment before running your code. And, it uses a global cache with hard-links, which means installing the same package across multiple projects is nearly instant. In short, uv removes an entire category of "works on my machine" problems that have plagued Python development for years.