Python - Setup Virtual Environment in Windows and Linux

Introduction

• A Virtual Environment is a Python environment, that is an isolated working copy of Python that allows you to work on a specific project without affecting other projects.
• So basically it is a tool that enables multiple side-by-side installations of Python, one for each project.

Creating a Python virtual environment in Linux

1. Install Pip on your host.

    sudo apt-get install python-pip
   

2. Then install virtualenv and check the version.

    pip install virtualenv
    virtualenv --version
   

3. Create a virtual environment now by providing a name.

    virtualenv virtualenv_name
   

4. This will create a folder named virtualenv_name will be created. If you want to create a virtualenv for specific python version, type

    $ virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3 virtualenv_name
   

   or

    virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python2.7 virtualenv_name
   

5. Now at last we just need to activate it, using command

    source virtualenv_name/bin/activate
   

6. Now you are in a Python virtual environment You can deactivate using

    deactivate
   

Creating Python virtualenv in Windows

1. If python is installed in your system, then pip comes in handy. So simple steps are: 1) Install virtualenv using

    pip install virtualenv 
   

2. Now in which ever directory you are, this line below will create a virtualenv there

    python -m venv myenv
   

3. To active the virtual environment in the same directory, type the below command

    myenv\Scripts\activate
   

4. To deactive the virtual environment, type

    deactivate