Hands-On Software Engineering with Python

Using Python virtual environments

Python allows a developer to create virtual environments that collect up all the baseline language facilities and functionality into a single location. Once set up, those virtual environments have packages installed in to or removed from them, which allows a project that's executing in the context of the environment to have access to packages and functionality that may not be needed in the base system. A virtual environment also provides a mechanism for keeping track of those installations, which in turn allows a developer to keep track of only those dependencies and requirements that are relevant to the project itself.

Virtual environments can also be used, with some care and thought, to allow a project ...