Pipenv

Setting up virtual environments using pipenv

Pipenv is a tool that aims to bring the best of all packaging worlds (bundler, composer, npm, cargo, yarn, etc.) to the Python world. It automatically manages project packages through the Pipfile file as you install or uninstall packages.

Pipenv is a tool that aims to simplify the process of managing package dependencies in a Python project. It does this by introducing a new file called the Pipfile, which contains all the package dependencies for your project. You can use the pipenv command to install packages, and it will automatically update the Pipfile and Pipfile.lock with the new package information. The Pipfile.lock file is used to ensure that the exact same packages are installed on every machine that runs pipenv install, which can be useful for reproducing environments and avoiding dependency conflicts.

Pipenv is designed to be easy to use, and it integrates with other tools such as pyenv to manage multiple Python versions and pipx to install and run Python packages in isolated environments.

Installing pipenv

To install pipenv, you will need to have Python and pip, the Python package manager, installed on your system. If you do not have Python and pip already installed, you can install them by following the instructions for your operating system:

Windows:

Download the Python installer from the official Python website (https://www.python.org/downloads/) and run it to install Python on your system. Make sure to select the option to add Python to your system path during the installation.

Open a Command Prompt window and run the following command to install pip:

python -m pip install -U pip

macOS:

Python and pip are pre-installed on macOS. You can check if they are installed on your system by running the following commands in a terminal:

python --version
pip --version

Linux:

Python and pip are often pre-installed on Linux systems. You can check if they are installed on your system by running the following commands in a terminal:

python3 --version
pip3 --version

If Python and pip are not installed on your system, you can install them by running the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3
sudo apt-get install python3-pip

Once you have Python and pip installed, you can install pipenv by running the following command:

pip install --user pipenv

This will install pipenv in your user directory, so you will be able to use it without having to use sudo. If you want to install pipenv system-wide, you can run the following command instead:

sudo pip install pipenv

This will install pipenv globally, allowing it to be used by any user on the system.

You can verify that pipenv is installed correctly by running the following command:

pipenv --version

This should print the version number of pipenv, indicating that it is installed and working correctly.

Creating a virtual environment using pipenv

Run the following command to create a new virtual environment:

pipenv --python <python_version>

Replace <python_version> with the version of Python that you want to use in the virtual environment.

For example, to create a virtual environment with Python 3.7, you would run:

pipenv --python 3.7

To activate the virtual environment, run the following command:

pipenv shell

You should now see the virtual environment's name in your terminal prompt, indicating that it is active.

To install packages in the virtual environment, you can use pipenv install command. For example, to install the requests package, you would run:

pipenv install requests

To deactivate the virtual environment, simply run the exit command i.e.

exit