List available upgrades for tools with uv tool list --outdated

[traynier]

Is there no way of seeing updates for tools?

I currently have ruff 0.7.3 installed. I can successfully upgrade the tool using uv tool upgrade ruff, which updates it to 0.7.4, but would like to see what is available to upgrade first so that I can go and read the release notes (and put it in a script to show me when new versions are available). I used uv tool install ruff rather than just running via uvx so that I can use generate-shell-completion for it (that does not work when running under uvx as starting a command with uvx ruff ... does not show shell completion for ruff ...)

I am using uv 0.5.3 on Windows, with Powershell 7.4.6

> uv tool list
ruff v0.7.3
- ruff.exe

My uv installed version of ruff is old, but I would have expected to be able to use --outdated like on uv pip list / uv tree

> uv tool list --outdated
error: unexpected argument '--outdated' found

Usage: uv.exe tool list [OPTIONS]

I was looking at if there was other ways of doing this, but it appears not. Oddly, the shell completion for powershell gives --no-upgrade as an option on uv tool upgrade :

> uv tool upgrade --no-upgrade--allow-insecure-host
--all                         --index-strategy              --no-offline                  --resolution
--allow-insecure-host         --index-url                   --no-preview                  --show-settings
--allow-python-downloads      --isolated                    --no-progress                 --upgrade
--binary                      --keyring-provider            --no-python-downloads         --upgrade-package
--build                       --link-mode                   --no-reinstall                --verbose
--build-isolation             --native-tls                  --no-sources                  --version
--cache-dir                   --no-binary                   --no-upgrade                  -C
--color                       --no-binary-package           --offline                     -f
--compile-bytecode            --no-build                    --pre                         -h
--config-file                 --no-build-isolation          --prerelease                  -i
--config-setting              --no-build-isolation-package  --preview                     -n
--default-index               --no-build-package            --project                     -p
--directory                   --no-cache                    --python                      -P
--exclude-newer               --no-color                    --python-fetch                -q
--extra-index-url             --no-compile-bytecode         --python-preference           -U
--find-links                  --no-config                   --quiet                       -v
--help                        --no-index                    --reinstall                   -V
--index                       --no-native-tls               --reinstall-package

no-upgrade

But running it just gives an error:

> uv tool upgrade --no-upgrade ruff
thread 'main' panicked at crates\uv-cli\src\options.rs:18:17:
internal error: entered unreachable code: Clap should make this impossible
note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` environment variable to display a backtrace

But that appears to be more an issue with the uv generate-shell-completion powershell as that option is not listed in the help/documentation?

[charliermarsh]

I think --outdated makes sense to add here.

I need to look at why we're panicking there -- that's strange.

[FishAlchemist]

@charliermarsh
In uv tool upgrade, --upgrade is enabled by default. However, why not remove both --upgrade and --no-upgrade from uv tool upgrade?
After all, it seems odd for an upgrade tool to have a flag that doesn't upgrade or to explicitly mention upgrading.

[charliermarsh]

It's a little bit of a pain. We have a common ResolverInstallerArgs struct for arguments that are shared across commands, and --upgrade is inherited from that.

[charliermarsh]

I'll fix it, it just requires some unfortunate duplication.

[charliermarsh]

Cleaned up in #9318, but leaving this issue open since it's about --outdated.

[xorander00]

Just my $0.02, but I think -n/--dry-run is a better flag for it. It's more in line with how other tools handle it, plus it can be a common flag for other sub-commands as well (e.g. install, uninstall, etc).

Having an option to just list outdated packages would be very useful though, at least for my use-case. I have a script that uses ecosystem-specific tools for various platforms to check for and list all outdated packages. I like to see everything that can be upgraded before actually doing it, just in case it's not necessary or it might take a while and bog down resources.