Using a Python virtual environment

This is a quick demonstration of how to create a virtual environment in Python3. I’m starting with an empty directory in ~/projects/demo. I then run the command to create a virtual environment:

ed@imac:~/projects/demo$ ll
ed@imac:~/projects/demo$ python3 -m venv my_env
ed@imac:~/projects/demo$ ll
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 6 ed staff 192B Jan 24 18:14 my_env

Note that the command created a directory with the name I gave it: ‘my_env’. Next we have to activate it. ‘Activate’ changes Python’s internal references to look for things such as which Python version to run, and where installed modules are placed.

ed@imac:~/projects/demo$ source my_env/bin/activate (my_env)ed@imac:~/projects/demo$

I have a bash script that changes the prompt to show the current Python environment; notice that after activating the prompt now starts with ‘(myenv)’.

Installed modules are located in the ‘site-packages’ subdirectory that’s a few levels deep. Let’s see what’s in this fresh virtual env’s site-packages:

(my_env)ed@imac:~/projects/demo$ ll my_env/lib/python3.6/site-packages/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 3 ed staff 96B Jan 24 18:14 pycache
-rw-r--r-- 1 ed staff 126B Jan 24 18:14 easy_install.py
drwxr-xr-x 23 ed staff 736B Jan 24 18:14 pip
drwxr-xr-x 10 ed staff 320B Jan 24 18:14 pip-9.0.1.dist-info
drwxr-xr-x 6 ed staff 192B Jan 24 18:14 pkg_resources
drwxr-xr-x 34 ed staff 1.1K Jan 24 18:14 setuptools
drwxr-xr-x 12 ed staff 384B Jan 24 18:14 setuptools-28.8.0.dist-info

One of my favorite development tools for Python is the pudb debugger. To show that we can install a package, let’s try importing it first (and failing):

(my_env)ed@family-imac:~/projects/demo$ python
Python 3.6.4 (v3.6.4:d48ecebad5, Dec 18 2017, 21:07:28)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import pudb
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pudb'
>>> ^D
(my_env)ed@family-imac:~/projects/demo$

Now let’s install it using pip:

(my_env)ed@family-imac:~/projects/demo$ pip install pudb
Collecting pudb
Collecting urwid>=1.1.1 (from pudb)
Collecting pygments>=1.0 (from pudb)
Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/13/e5/6d710c9cf96c31ac82657bcfb441df328b22df8564d58d0c4cd62612674c/Pygments-2.3.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: urwid, pygments, pudb
Successfully installed pudb-2018.1 pygments-2.3.1 urwid-2.0.1
(my_env)ed@family-imac:~/projects/demo$

Let’s look at the site-packages directory after installing pudb:

(my_env)ed@family-imac:~/projects/demo$ ll my_env/lib/python3.6/site-packages/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 10 ed staff 320B Jan 24 18:38 Pygments-2.3.1.dist-info
drwxr-xr-x 3 ed staff 96B Jan 24 18:14 pycache
-rw-r--r-- 1 ed staff 126B Jan 24 18:14 easy_install.py
drwxr-xr-x 7 ed staff 224B Jan 24 18:35 pip
drwxr-xr-x 9 ed staff 288B Jan 24 18:35 pip-19.0.1.dist-info
drwxr-xr-x 6 ed staff 192B Jan 24 18:14 pkg_resources
drwxr-xr-x 18 ed staff 576B Jan 24 18:38 pudb
drwxr-xr-x 9 ed staff 288B Jan 24 18:38 pudb-2018.1.dist-info
drwxr-xr-x 22 ed staff 704B Jan 24 18:38 pygments
drwxr-xr-x 34 ed staff 1.1K Jan 24 18:14 setuptools
drwxr-xr-x 12 ed staff 384B Jan 24 18:14 setuptools-28.8.0.dist-info
drwxr-xr-x 33 ed staff 1.0K Jan 24 18:38 urwid
drwxr-xr-x 7 ed staff 224B Jan 24 18:38 urwid-2.0.1.dist-info
(my_env)ed@family-imac:~/projects/demo$ python

Note that there are now entries for both pudb and its dependency, pygments. And to verify that it has been successfully installed:

(my_env)ed@family-imac:~/projects/demo$ python
Python 3.6.4 (v3.6.4:d48ecebad5, Dec 18 2017, 21:07:28)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import pudb
>>> pudb.version
'2018.1'
>>> ^D
(my_env)ed@family-imac:~/projects/demo$

There’s a ton more to using virtual environments, but that should give you a start.