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The virtual environment tool creates a folder inside the project directory. By default, the folder is called venv , but you can give it a custom name too. It keeps Python and pip executable files inside the virtual environment folder.
To create a virtual environment, go to your project's directory and run venv. If you are using Python 2, replace venv with virtualenv in the below commands. The second argument is the location to create the virtual environment. Generally, you can just create this in your project and call it env .
lib/ contains the site-packages/ directory nested in a folder that designates the Python version ( python3. 10/ ). site-packages/ is one of the main reasons for creating your virtual environment. This folder is where you'll install external packages that you want to use within your virtual environment.
Many people use the virtualenvwrapper tool, which keeps all virtualenvs in the same place (the ~/.virtualenvs directory) and allows shortcuts for creating and keeping them there. For example, you might do:
mkvirtualenv djangoproject
and then later:
workon djangoproject
It's probably a bad idea to keep the virtualenv directory in the project itself, since you don't want to distribute it (it might be specific to your computer or operating system). Instead, keep a requirements.txt file using pip:
pip freeze > requirements.txt
and distribute that. This will allow others using your project to reinstall all the same requirements into their virtualenv with:
pip install -r requirements.txt
Changing the location of the virtualenv directory breaks it
This is one advantage of putting the directory outside of the repository tree, e.g. under ~/.virtualenvs with virutalenvwrapper.
Otherwise, if you keep it in the project tree, moving the project location will break the virtualenv.
See: Renaming a virtualenv folder without breaking it
There is --relocatable but it is known to not be perfect.
Another minor advantage: you don't have to .gitignore it.
The advantages of putting it gitignored in the project tree itself are:
The generally accepted place to put them is the same place that the default installation of virtualenvwrapper puts them: ~/.virtualenvs
Related: virtualenvwrapper is an excellent tool that provides shorthands for the common virtualenv commands. http://www.doughellmann.com/projects/virtualenvwrapper/
If you use pyenv install Python, then pyenv-virtualenv will be a best practice. If set .python-version file, it can auto activate or deactivate virtual env when you change work folder. Pyenv-virtualenv also put all virtual env into $HOME/.pyenv/versions folder.
From my personal experience, I would recommend to organize all virtual environments in one single directory. Unless someone has extremely sharp memory and can remember files/folders scattered across file system.
Not a big fan of using other tools just to mange virtual environments. In VSCode if I configure(python.venvPath) directory containing all virtual environments, it can automatically recognize all of them.
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