direnv is a tool to set up automatically environment variables as soon as we enter in a directory that contains a .envrc
file. We can use this feature to activate our virtualenvs as well.
Let's see what happens when we activate manually a virtualenv with source ./env/bin/activate
:
- A new new environment variable called
VIRTUAL_ENV
is exported. - The path is updated to include the
bin
directory inside ourvirtualenv
this is made to allow us to point to the correct python installation and run cli interfaces exposed by the dependencies we have installed.
Because all the "magic" about activating a virtualenv
is basically configuring some environment variables we can do it automatically using direnv
.
Let's assume we have a virtualenv
installed in the path /Users/erick/.virtualenvs/demo
, the virtualenv
is located inside ~/.environments
because I'm using virtualenvwrapper
but it can be in any other location. Now we can use this location to configure our .envrc
file as the following:
export VIRTUAL_ENV=/Users/erick/.virtualenvs/demo
export PATH=/Users/erick/.virtualenvs/demo/bin:$PATH
Now when we enter our project folder the virtualenv will be "activated" automatically and when we leave the project folder it will be "deactivated".
Also when we use this method is easiest for our editor(emacs in my case) to recognize the current python installation and be able to run tests, execute files, etc.
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