introduction to Paython - 401-advanced-javascript-Mai/amman-javascript-401d1 GitHub Wiki

What is an Environment? A virtual environment is a Python environment such that the Python interpreter, libraries and scripts installed into it are isolated from those installed in other virtual environments, and (by default) any libraries installed in a “system” Python, i.e., one which is installed as part of your operating system. A virtual environment is a directory tree which contains Python executable files and other files which indicate that it is a virtual environment.

Common installation tools such as Setuptools and pip work as expected with virtual environments. In other words, when a virtual environment is active, they install Python packages into the virtual environment without needing to be told to do so explicitly.

When a virtual environment is active (i.e., the virtual environment’s Python interpreter is running), the attributes sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix point to the base directory of the virtual environment, whereas sys.base_prefix and sys.base_exec_prefix point to the non-virtual environment Python installation which was used to create the virtual environment. If a virtual environment is not active, then sys.prefix is the same as sys.base_prefix and sys.exec_prefix is the same as sys.base_exec_prefix (they all point to a non-virtual environment Python installation).

When a virtual environment is active, any options that change the installation path will be ignored from all distutils configuration files to prevent projects being inadvertently installed outside of the virtual environment.

When working in a command shell, users can make a virtual environment active by running an activate script in the virtual environment’s executables directory (the precise filename is shell-dependent), which prepends the virtual environment’s directory for executables to the PATH environment variable for the running shell. There should be no need in other circumstances to activate a virtual environment—scripts installed into virtual environments have a “shebang” line which points to the virtual environment’s Python interpreter. This means that the script will run with that interpreter regardless of the value of PATH. On Windows, “shebang” line processing is supported if you have the Python Launcher for Windows installed (this was added to Python in 3.3 - see PEP 397 for more details). Thus, double-clicking an installed script in a Windows Explorer window should run the script with the correct interpreter without there needing to be any reference to its virtual environment in PATH.