Virtual environments

This section provides a quick reference for using virtual environments for the Merlin project.

Creating a virtual environment

To create a new virtual environment:

$ python3 -m venv venv

Caution

A virtual environment will need to be created for each system type. It’s recommended to name the virtual environment venv_<system> to make it easier to switch between them. This documentation will use venv for simplicity to reference the virtual environment.

Tip

Virtual environments provide an isolated environment for working on Python projects to avoid dependency conflicts.

Activating a Virtualenv

Once the virtual environment is created it can be activated like so:

$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv) $

This will set the Python and Pip path to the virtual environment at venv/bin/python and venv/bin/pip respectively.

The virtual environment name should now display in the terminal, which means it is active. Any calls to pip will install to the virtual environment.

Tip

To verify that Python and Pip are pointing to the virtual environment, run $ which python and $ which pip.

Deactivating a Virtualenv

Virtualenvs can be exited via the following:

(venv) $ deactivate
$