A Short Tutorial on Using venv

I am in the process of writing a series of short tutorials for students in my upcoming Digital Public History course. In this tutorial, I introduce the venv tool, which creates a virtual environment for your Python projects.

1. Create a virtual environment using venv:

python -m venv ./venv

This creates a new folder in the directory where you are working. You can name the ./venv portion of this command anything you want. The ./ indicates your path and can be set up any way you like. The venv portion is the name of your folder and can be any name you choose.

2. To activate your venv environment, you type

source /root/venv/bin/activate

source is the command that points to the file. WHat follows is the path to the activate command in your bin file. venv is the name of the folder that you created in the previous step.

3. Once your environment is activated, you can operate as you like within your virtual environment.

4. When you want to deactivate your virtual environment, type

deactivate

Your computer will return you to your default shell (bash, zsh, etc.)

The tutorial is available through Github at this link: https://github.com/6500jmk4/venv_tutorial.