How Does a Virtual Environment Work?

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Using Virtual Environments

To get started, if you’re not using Python 3, you’ll want to install the virtualenv tool with pip:

$ pip install virtualenv

If you are using Python 3, then you should already have the venv module from the standard library installed.

Start by making a new directory to work with:

$ mkdir python-virtual-environments && cd python-virtual-environments

Create a new virtual environment inside the directory:

# Python 2:
$ virtualenv env

# Python 3
$ python3 -m venv env

The Python 3 venv approach has the benefit of forcing you to choose a specific version of the Python 3 interpreter that should be used to create the virtual environment. This avoids any confusion as to which Python installation the new environment is based on.

From Python 3.3 to 3.4, the recommended way to create a virtual environment was to use the pyvenv command-line tool that also comes included with your Python 3 installation by default. But on 3.6 and above, python3 -m venv is the way to go.

In the above example, this command creates a directory called env, which contains a directory structure similar to this:

├── bin
│   ├── activate
│   ├── activate.csh
│   ├── activate.fish
│   ├── easy_install
│   ├── easy_install-3.5
│   ├── pip
│   ├── pip3
│   ├── pip3.5
│   ├── python -> python3.5
│   ├── python3 -> python3.5
│   └── python3.5 -> /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/bin/python3.5
├── include
├── lib
│   └── python3.5
│       └── site-packages
└── pyvenv.cfg

Here’s what each folder contains:

• bin: files that interact with the virtual environment
• include: C headers that compile the Python packages
• lib: a copy of the Python version along with a site-packages folder where each dependency is installed

Further, there are copies of, or symlinks to, a few different Python tools as well as to the Python executables themselves. These files are used to ensure that all Python code and commands are executed within the context of the current environment, which is how the isolation from the global environment is achieved. We’ll explain this in more detail in the next section.

More interesting are the activate scripts in the bin directory. These scripts are used to set up your shell to use the environment’s Python executable and its site-packages by default.

In order to use this environment’s packages/resources in isolation, you need to “activate” it. To do this, just run the following:

$ source env/bin/activate
(env) $

Notice how your prompt is now prefixed with the name of your environment (env, in our case). This is the indicator that env is currently active, which means the python executable will only use this environment’s packages and settings.

To show the package isolation in action, we can use the bcrypt module as an example. Let’s say we have bcrypt installed system-wide but not in our virtual environment.

Before we test this, we need to go back to the “system” context by executing deactivate:

(env) $ deactivate
$

Now your shell session is back to normal, and the python command refers to the global Python install. Remember to do this whenever you’re done using a specific virtual environment.

Now, install bcrypt and use it to hash a password:

$ pip -q install bcrypt
$ python -c "import bcrypt; print(bcrypt.hashpw('password'.encode('utf-8'), bcrypt.gensalt()))"
$2b$12$vWa/VSvxxyQ9d.WGgVTdrell515Ctux36LCga8nM5QTW0.4w8TXXi

Here’s what happens if we try the same command when the virtual environment is activated:

$ source env/bin/activate
(env) $ python -c "import bcrypt; print(bcrypt.hashpw('password'.encode('utf-8'), bcrypt.gensalt()))"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named 'bcrypt'

As you can see, the behavior of the python -c "import bcrypt..." command changes after the source env/bin/activate call.

In one instance, we have bcrypt available to us, and in the next we don’t. This is the kind of separation we’re looking to achieve with virtual environments, which is now easily achieved.

To explain how this works, let’s first check out the locations of the different python executables. With the environment “deactivated,” run the following:

$ which python
/usr/bin/python

Now, activate it and run the command again:

$ source env/bin/activate
(env) $ which python
/Users/michaelherman/python-virtual-environments/env/bin/python

After activating the environment, we’re now getting a different path for the python executable because, in an active environment, the $PATH environment variable is slightly modified.

Notice the difference between the first path in $PATH before and after the activation:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:

$ source env/bin/activate
(env) $ echo $PATH
/Users/michaelherman/python-virtual-environments/env/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:

In the latter example, our virtual environment’s bin directory is now at the beginning of the path. That means it’s the first directory searched when running an executable on the command line. Thus, the shell uses our virtual environment’s instance of Python instead of the system-wide version.