Use pipenv to create a bug-free virtual environment

Dependency bugs can be quite annoying. You have to keep upgrading and downgrading dependency versions in case of a conflict. This takes a lot of time away from your development process. Why not use pipenv to avoid this?

Pipenv is a comprehensive programming tool that is now replacing pip and virtualenv. It's used to automatically set up and manage python virtual environments.

In this article, you will learn what pipenv is, and how to set up and use it to manage your python environment.

Prerequisites:

• You have python3 installed (preferably python3.7- python 3.9)
• You have pip3 installed
• You have prior knowledge of setting up applications using python django framework
• You must be familiar with python environment set-up using pip

What is pipenv

Pipenv is a dependency manager for python project environments. Pipenv enables easy and quick setup of virtual environments. It efficiently handles the addition and removal of dependency packages. Pipenv combines the power of pip,pipfile and virtualenv to reduce dependency clash by a big percentage.

Some of the advantages of using pipenv are:

• Installs packages without versions, therefore reducing conflict when handling different versions of dependencies.
• Combines pip and virtual environment, so you no longer use them separately.

• Eliminates requirements.txt -which can be hard to manage. Instead, pipenv creates Pipfile to track dependencies and Pipfile.lock to produce deterministic builds.

• Enables quick and easy setup of virtual environments.
  Now that you have seen the benefits of using pipenv to set up our virtual environment, how about we do it practically?

Follow the following steps to install and create your virtual environment using pipenv:

1. Install pipenv

Install pipenv using any of these three commands:

$ sudo apt install pipenv
$ pip install pipenv
$ pip install --user pipenv

A successful installation will show the pipenv version on the command line as shown below:

Congrats! you have successfully installed pipenv. Next, you will activate the virtual environment.

2. Activate the virtual environment

Since pipenv manages dependencies inside each project, you need to activate your environment inside your project folder. For example:

$ cd pipenv-test

Once in the folder, you can activate your virtual environment using the following command:

$ pipenv install requests

Pipenv install requests enables pipenv to fetch components of the request library such as the Pipfile and the Pipfile. lock that manages the virtual environment.

A successful installation of requests is as illustrated below:

The Pipfile stores all installed dependencies. Open the Pipfile on your code editor. It will look similar to the image shown below:

Next, you enter the pipenv shell where you run the activated virtual environment.

3. Activate pipenv shell

Run pipenv shell to enter the pipenv virtual environment. This will start up the virtual environment under which our application will run. It will appear as illustrated below:

$ pipenv shell

Do you notice the changes on your command line after running pipenv shell? A virtual environment created in the name of your project appears in brackets.

This indicates your environment is live. Now you can go ahead and install your dependencies. Remember for every dependency you install, it appears in the Pipefile.

Conclusion

Now that you have seen how to install and set up pipenv to manage your virtual environments, go ahead and realize its benefits. This will reduce the amount of time spent dealing with dependency clashes. For more information on pipenv and how to handle error messages please visit pipenv.pypa.

Happy coding!