Recipe

Create and activate a new virtualenv

• pyenv versions or pyenv install -l - list available versions
• pyenv virtualenv <python version> <environment name>
• pyenv local <environment name>
  • this creates a .python-version file in the current directory
  • the environment will be automatically activated and deactivated because eval "$(pyenv virtualenv-init -)" is in the .zshrc file.
• python -V
• python -m test

If you did not configure eval "$(pyenv virtualenv-init -)" to run in your shell then

• pyenv activate <environment name>
• pyenv deactivate

Background

• pyenv manages multiple versions of Python itself.
• virtualenv/venv manages virtual environments for a specific Python version.
• pyenv-virtualenv is a pyenv plugin that plays nicely with virtualenv. It manages virtual environments across varying versions of Python.
• python -V - shows which python version is currently being used.
• which python - shows the path or location of the current python.

Python versions

Installing new python versions

• pyenv install --list | grep " 3\.9\." - list versions
• pyevn install <name> - install a new version
• pyenv python versions are installed at ~/.pyenv/versions/
• You can uninstall a pyenv python version by
  • rm -rf .. the subdir in ~/.pyenv/versions/...
  • pyenv uninstall <name>

Set a particular python version

• pyenv versions - list available versions
• pyenv global <name> - set system default python version
• pyenv global system - back to how things were before pyenv
• pyenv local <name> - set default version for this current dir
• this creates a .python-version file in the current directory. If pyenv is active in your environment then the version specified in this file will be activated

Other commands

• pyenv uninstall <version>
• pyenv rehash - run after installing a new version, or install a package that provides binaries

source

Tests

• python -m test - run some tests to be confident everything is ok

Source

Real Python article

Code editor integration using activate_this.py

So that code editors like vim can respond to the currently active virtual environment and update path, sys.path and sys.prefix (for example when running Django test suites) virtualenv uses activate_this.py to make these changes.

For some reason it isn't available on my setup, so here is a copy I found somewhere. It's different to the version hosted on the virtualenv repo and I haven't looked at why yet. Copy paste the version below into ~/.pyenv/versions/<version>/envs/<environment name>/bin/activate_this.py

activate_this.py

## -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
## https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/blob/main/src/virtualenv/activation/python/activate_this.py

"""Activate virtualenv for current interpreter:
Use exec(open(this_file).read(), {'__file__': this_file}).
This can be used when you must use an existing Python interpreter, not the virtualenv bin/python.
"""
import os
import site
import sys

try:
    abs_file = os.path.abspath(__file__)
except NameError:
    raise AssertionError("You must use exec(open(this_file).read(), {'__file__': this_file}))")

bin_dir = os.path.dirname(abs_file)
base = bin_dir[: -len("__BIN_NAME__") - 1]  # strip away the bin part from the __file__, plus the path separator

## prepend bin to PATH (this file is inside the bin directory)
os.environ["PATH"] = os.pathsep.join([bin_dir] + os.environ.get("PATH", "").split(os.pathsep))
os.environ["VIRTUAL_ENV"] = base  # virtual env is right above bin directory

## add the virtual environments libraries to the host python import mechanism
prev_length = len(sys.path)
for lib in "__LIB_FOLDERS__".split(os.pathsep):
    path = os.path.realpath(os.path.join(bin_dir, lib))
    site.addsitedir(path.decode("utf-8") if "__DECODE_PATH__" else path)
sys.path[:] = sys.path[prev_length:] + sys.path[0:prev_length]

sys.real_prefix = sys.prefix
sys.prefix = base