Virtual Environments using venv

Skill - Virtual environments using ‘venv’

Table of Contents

Skills Required

• Setup python development environment
• Install and manage python packages

Please make sure to have all the skills mentioned above to understand and execute the code mentioned below. Go through the above skills if necessary for reference or revision

---

Why virtual environments

• Each installed python package has a particular version number.
• Sometimes we may desire to have different version numbers of the same package for different python projects (may be due to compatibility issues).
• This can be solved by creating a virtual environment and using it in our project

Introduction

• A virtual environment has its own python packages isolated from the default system python environment and its installed packages
• This way we can manage the packages installed and their version numbers and use it in our projects

Create a virtual environment using ‘venv’

• Create a folder
• Open command prompt inside that folder
• Enter command python -m venv env_name
  you can use any name instead of env_name

Activate a virtual environment

• Open a command prompt inside the project folder using Shift + right click
• If the virtual environment name is project_env, Enter command project_env\Scripts\activate.bat

Managing packages inside a virtual environment

• Once the virtual environment is activated, you can manage the environment packages as usual using pip. For more information, go through this post on managing python packages

Leaving a virtual environment

• Open a command prompt inside the project folder using Shift + right click
• If the virtual environment name is project_env, Enter command project_env\Scripts\deactivate.bat

Using a created virtual environment in Visual Studio Code

In order to use a created virtual environment in Visual Studio Code, follow these steps.

• Press Ctrl+Shift+P, select Open Workspace Settings as shown below.
  
• Click open settings button (page like icon on the top right).
  
• This opens the .vscode > settings.json file as shown below. Then create a key value pair "python.pythonPath" : "path\\to\\env_folder\\Scripts\\python.exe" in settings.json file as shown below.
  
• This will make VS Code to use the created virtual environment.
• You can verify this by keeping your mouse at the bottom-left as shown below.
  

Further Reading

• https://packaging.python.org/guides/installing-using-pip-and-virtual-environments/#creating-a-virtual-environment

Video

You can the video on this post here

---

Table of Contents