Bh/make uv use global venv instead of creating project one

[brian-hussey]

🐛 Bug-fix PR

Before opening this PR please:

1. make lint - passes ruff, mypy, pylint
2. make test - all unit + integration tests green
3. make coverage - ≥ 90 %
4. make docker docker-run-ssl or make podman podman-run-ssl
5. Update relevant documentation.
6. Tested with sqlite and postgres + redis.
7. Manual regression no longer fails. Ensure the UI and /version work correctly.

---

📌 Summary

This fixes #1461 - an issue with having the virtual environment(s) split between a global virtual env and a project virtual env.
This change encourages uv to use the global venv instead of accidentally creating a project based one (which it does by default).

🔁 Reproduction Steps

Bug: #1461

Steps to reproduce:

1. Clone down the repo
2. make venv

[brian@dogmatix] ➜  mcp-context-forge git:(main) ✗ make venv
Requirement already satisfied: pip in /Users/brian/.venv/mcpgateway/lib/python3.11/site-packages (24.0)
[...]
# Eventually, we want to transition to using uv/uvx exclusively, at which point we will only need
# a virtual environment if the user has not installed uv into their account.
uv is /Users/brian/.local/bin/uv
✅  Virtual env created.
💡  Enter it with:
    . /Users/brian/.venv/mcpgateway/bin/activate

3. Activate virtual environment

[brian@dogmatix] ➜ [mcpgateway] mcp-context-forge git:(main) ✗ . /Users/brian/.venv/mcpgateway/bin/activate
[brian@dogmatix] ➜ [mcpgateway] mcp-context-forge git:(main) ✗ which python
/Users/brian/.venv/mcpgateway/bin/python

4. run make pylint

[brian@dogmatix] ➜ [mcpgateway] mcp-context-forge git:(main) ✗ make pylint
🐛 pylint mcpgateway (parallel)...
uv run pylint -j 0 --fail-on E --fail-under 10 mcpgateway
warning: `VIRTUAL_ENV=/Users/brian/.venv/mcpgateway` does not match the project environment path `.venv` and will be ignored; use `--active` to target the active environment instead
 [...]

Note: warning and creation of .venv directory in the project area
5. run pylint

[brian@dogmatix] ➜ [mcpgateway] mcp-context-forge git:(main) ✗ pylint
zsh: command not found: pylint

Note despite having run with make, the tool is not available directly. I'd expect tools to be available in my virtual environment after successful execution of make target.

🐞 Root Cause

Inconsistent virtual environment definition means activating the wrong one stops normal function of project make tasks.

💡 Fix Description

I've updated the uv run tasks to use the active virtual environment instead of uv's default action to ignore the active one in favour of a local ".venv" directory.

I've confirmed the other uv based tasks are not affected, it only seems to be the uv run commands that cause this issue.

Now steps end up with:

Steps to reproduce:

1. Clone down the repo
2. make venv

[brian@dogmatix] ➜  mcp-context-forge git:(main) ✗ make venv
Requirement already satisfied: pip in /Users/brian/.venv/mcpgateway/lib/python3.11/site-packages (24.0)
[...]
# Eventually, we want to transition to using uv/uvx exclusively, at which point we will only need
# a virtual environment if the user has not installed uv into their account.
uv is /Users/brian/.local/bin/uv
✅  Virtual env created.
💡  Enter it with:
    . /Users/brian/.venv/mcpgateway/bin/activate

3. Activate virtual environment

[brian@dogmatix] ➜ [mcpgateway] mcp-context-forge git:(main) ✗ . /Users/brian/.venv/mcpgateway/bin/activate
[brian@dogmatix] ➜ [mcpgateway] mcp-context-forge git:(main) ✗ which python
/Users/brian/.venv/mcpgateway/bin/python

4. run make pylint

> make pylint
🐛 pylint mcpgateway (parallel)...
Uninstalled 10 packages in 119ms
Installed 242 packages in 559ms

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Your code has been rated at 10.00/10 (previous run: 10.00/10, +0.00)

Note: No warning message
5. run pylint

> pylint
No files to lint: exiting.

Note despite having run with make, the tool is not available directly. I'd expect tools to be available in my virtual environment after successful execution of make target.
6. run ls .venv

> ls .venv
ls: .venv: No such file or directory

🧪 Verification

Check	Command	Status
Lint suite	make lint
Unit tests	make test
Coverage ≥ 90 %	make coverage
Manual regression no longer fails	steps / screenshots

📐 MCP Compliance (if relevant)

• Matches current MCP spec
• No breaking change to MCP clients

✅ Checklist

• Code formatted (make black isort pre-commit)
• No secrets/credentials committed

[brian-hussey]

Updated smoketest Make task as well as it failed the pipeline by not having access to the virtual environment