What the pls?

tl;dr; The pls package on PyPI is an abandoned Python version (last released as v6.0.0 in 2023). The actively-developed pls was rewritten in Rust and now lives at pls-rs/pls. If you installed it with uv tool install pls or pipx install pls, you have the wrong one. Uninstall it and install the Rust build instead (e.g. brew install pls-rs/pls/pls).

You may have heard me sing the praises of pls. I really love the icons and colors to disambiguate files and provide more information about them, the developer workflow, and more. Here’s an example in the Warp terminal for my jinja-partials package.

But installing and managing this package is weird and kinda deceiving to say the least. pls was originally pure Python (up to v6.0.0 in 2023). It’s listed on PyPI here. So it looks like that is just the latest, right? After all, if it was rewritten in Rust, it can still be installed via PyPI and in particular, via uv tool install pls.

But no.

There are a few funky things about the PyPI listing that give it away:

• The homepage 404s. The homepage link on the PyPI page goes nowhere. A bit sus.
• The GitHub repo is a silent redirect. The repo seems alive, but the link https://github.com/dhruvkb/pls silently redirects to https://github.com/pls-rs/pls. Clicking the link in PyPI seems to reference the Rust/latest version. But this happens only because GitHub does the redirect.

How do I install the correct, Rust-based pls?

To get the actively-developed version, don’t let PyPI fool you. There are two steps:

1. Uninstall the Python version if you installed it via Python: uv tool uninstall pls (or pipx uninstall pls).
2. Then install the Rust version directly. I use Homebrew, so it’s brew install pls-rs/pls/pls. See their getting started page for the option that works best for you.

Should you switch from the PyPI version of pls?

Yes - if you installed it with a Python tool, switch to the Rust version. Normally, I’d just chalk this up to standard package / open source drift and carry on with my life. But I’ve recommended pls to enough people that I feel I should call a bit of attention here. So if you’re using pls and you used Python tools to install it, like uv, uninstall that version and jump over to the Rust-based one.