Updated developer instructions and dependencies for uv (#127)

Author: katywarr

.gitignore

@@ -21,3 +21,4 @@ paper/01_lif/lava
 paper/01_lif/.venv
 paper/02_cnn/lava-dl
 paper/02_cnn/ann_pretraining/data/MNIST
+.DS_Store

docs/source/contributing.md

@@ -12,11 +12,7 @@ Use the standard github workflow.
 
 2. Setup the virtual environment for this project.
 
-3. Install all the development requirements.
-
-```shell
-pip install -r dev_requirements.txt
-```
+3. Install all the development requirements (refer to the options described below).
 
 4. Install git pre-commit hooks.
 
@@ -28,7 +24,45 @@ pre-commit install
 
 6. [Create a pull request from your fork](https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/proposing-changes-to-your-work-with-pull-requests/creating-a-pull-request-from-a-fork)
 
-## Code formatting.
+## Installing the development requirements
+
+### Using uv
+
+Easy package management can be accomplished using the [uv](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/) tool which will need to be available on
+your local workstation. As explained in [the official uv documentation](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/getting-started/installation/),
+a number of straightforward installation options are available. uv is supported by IDEs such as [PyCharm](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/uv.html).
+
+
+After the first clone of this repository, run the following command in the root directory. 
+This will automatically create
+a new virtual environment in the folder `.venv` and install all required NIR project dependencies to it.  
+
+```shell
+uv sync
+```
+
+
+To run commands within the uv virtual environment, prefix them with `uv run`. 
+For example, to run all the tests:
+
+```shell
+uv run pytest
+```
+
+Alternatively, you can activate the virtual environment in your current terminal and run commands directly.
+For example:
+```shell
+source .venv/bin/activate
+pytest
+```
+
+### Using pip 
+
+```shell
+pip install -r dev_requirements.txt
+```
+
+## Code formatting
 
 We use `black` to format the code and `ruff` to linting.
 The rules and formatting are embedded in the `pre-commit hooks`. So you do not need to explicitly worry about these but is good to know when you see erros while commiting your code or in the CI.

pyproject.toml

@@ -51,3 +51,12 @@ lint.per-file-ignores = {"docs/conf.py" = ["E402"]}
 exclude  = ["paper/"]
 extend-exclude = ["*.ipynb"]
 
+[dependency-groups]
+dev = [
+    "black>=25.1.0",
+    "pre-commit>=4.1.0",
+    "pytest>=8.3.5",
+    "ruff>=0.9.9",
+    "sphinx>=7.4.7",
+]
+