This is a continuation from my previous post (you can check it here ). Long story short, this is a minimalist way to manage your python virtual environment. All you need is python and git.
What Is Pyv?
Here’s a brief intro to what is pyv:
Pyv is a simple shell function that let you manage python virtual environment that decoupled from project directory.
To put it simply, pyv move the virtual environment to $PYV_dir which by default is $HOME/.cache/pyv
How Pyv Manage Virtual Environment
Pyv can create, remove, activate, deactivate, and list python virtual environment. Below is the explanation for each action that pyv can do.
Create Virtual Environment
Pyv create python virtual environment using python default command python -m venv to $PYV_DIR/{given-name}. The given-name can be from git repo name or user input.
If the user give pyv command an argument then pyv gonna create python virtual environment with that argument name. For example:
pce something-big
With the command above, pyv gonna create python virtual environment with the name something-big. pce is pyv command to to create python virtual environment (why would i made something with long command?).
Pyv also can create python virtual environment with git repo name. If you give no argument and just enter pce in a working git repo then pyv gonna create python virtual environment using the git repo name.
“How does pyv do that?” you might ask, well, pyv use the command git rev-parse --show-toplevel to get the git root directory name (with a lot of trimming of course). For those who don’t know what git root directory, to make simple, git root directory is the directory where you first use git init command or the directory that have .git directory.
Please do remember tho, you can only use pce without any argument in git working directory and not in git bare directory. What i mean by git working directory is the normal git repo that has .git directory in it.
Here’s an example of pce without an argument (in case you’re still confused):
pce
Yup, only that. Simple right?
Remove Virtual Environment
After creating virtual environment, how do you delete the virtual environment?
You can remove the virtual environment using pre command with or without argument similar to creating virtual environment.
For example, we already create something-big python virtual environment. And now we want to remove those virtual environment. All we need to do is something like this:
pre something-big
Those command gonna invoke the rm command to remove something-big virtual environment directory in $PYV_DIR. So the pre command depends on how you setup your rm command in your shell.
If you create virtual environment using the git repo name, and you want to remove those environment, you can use pre without an argument inside those git repo directory (assumming you haven’t changed the directory name). How to use the command is the same as when you create the virtual environment, just type
pre
and you’re done.
Activate Virtual Environment
Ok, now you know how to create and remove the virtual environment using pyv. Now, how do you activate those virtual environment?
Because we use default python python -m venv command, we need to know how the activate the virtual environment created using those command.
According to python venv documentation
, we need to source the activate file in <venv-dir>/bin/activate.
Did you know that the activate file is also a shell function? Now you know.
So, the pyv command to activate the virtual environment is pae. Similar to previous command, you can use pae with or without an argument. pae command basically to source activate file in virtual environment directory that located in $PYV_DIR.
Like previous command, let’s say we have something-big virtual env and we want to activate those command. All we need to do is
pae something-big
or if you create a virtual environment using git repo name (assuming you didn’t change the git repo directory name), then you can just use
pae
without any argument.
Deactivate Virtual Environment
After you know how to create, remove, and activate virtual environment with pyv. Now it’s time for you to know how to deactivate virtual environment.
You can deactivate the virtual environment either using default deactivate command or using pde. pde is just an alias for deactivate command provided by python venv. You do you.
Please keep in mind that you don’t need any argument to deactivate virtual environment.
List Virtual Environment
The last thing is how to list all the virtual environment that available?
To list all the virtual environment that ever created, you can use pve command without an argument or ls -l $PYV_DIR. pve is just an alias for ls -l $PYV_DIR.
Conclusions
There’s always an upside/downside to a project, and this project is no exception.
The upside is that, it’s minimal. If you didn’t do anything fancy with your python virtual environment then pyv probably gonna fit your need.
The downside is also “it’s minimal”. If you use default options that come with default python venv command, then you can’t do that with pyv. Pyv only able to handle python -m venv <env-directory>. That’s all.
At the time of writing this article, i’ve only tested pyv in bash and zsh. I might provide support for fish, csh/tcsh in the future.