如何创建独立于OS和Python版本的Python虚拟环境

Question

I am trying to create a virtual environment to run a script which requires Python 3.6. I started off with Pipenv but I am unable to create the same environment on other platforms via the Pipfile.lock or requirements.txt unless the other platform(s) has Python 3.6 installed. I have read this post but I am unsure which direction I should take to create a virtual environment which can be shared and run its own version of Python independent of operating system and version of Python installed on the other platform.

Answer 1

Virtual environments are not portable, they depend on the Python installation you have.

You can't share/distribute virtual environment with others, because you can't control which version of Python others are using. If you want to distribute your code along with all dependencies including the specific version of Python interpreter, you can use PyInstaller. It is far from perfect and little bit hacky. Also it generates a package which is specific to operating system.

https://pyinstaller.readthedocs.io/en/stable/operating-mode.html

There is also a detailed step-by-step guide on how to use PyInstaller. https://realpython.com/pyinstaller-python/

Answer 2

This is step-by-step how I use Python virtual environment and share it with co-workers.

To check python and virtualenv presence, run following commands:

which python3
python3 -m pip list | grep env
which virtualenv

Install a python virtual environment builder:

python3 -m pip install virtualenv

Create a virtual environment named venv inside the project's directory: virtualenv venv

To activate this environment use this command inside project's directory: source venv/bin/activate

Install python modules dependencies listed in a requirements.txt:

python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

You should activate virtual environment when you working with python in this directory for package installation and for running commands in the project directory. When you need to deactivate the virtual environment do it using deactivate command.

To deactivate environment simply run: deactivate