Python Virtual Environment Setup

Post created at 2022-12-12 10:30

Setting your virtual environment with another python version.

While I'm writing this post, I'm using Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish, wich has python 3.10.

But, I need to work on a project that runs on python 3.8. To assure that the development environment will be the same to the production environment, I have to setup this. I don't want to use docker in this case.

To start, we need to install required packages:

sudo apt install dirmngr ca-certificates software-properties-common apt-transport-https -y

We will use the launchpad PPA's to get things done easely.

Next, we need to install the GPG keys the repositories.

sudo gpg --list-keys

Output

gpg: directory '/root/.gnupg' created
gpg: keybox '/root/.gnupg/pubring.kbx' created
gpg: /root/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created

Now, wee need to import the GPG key.

sudo gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/deadsnakes.gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys F23C5A6CF475977595C89F51BA6932366A755776

gpg: key BA6932366A755776: public key "Launchpad PPA for deadsnakes" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1

If no errors, you can continue importing PPA. Use the command below to your installed version:

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish

echo 'deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/deadsnakes.gpg] https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/deadsnakes/ppa/ubuntu jammy main' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/python.list

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

echo 'deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/deadsnakes.gpg] https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/deadsnakes/ppa/ubuntu focal main' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/python.list

Complete the python3.8 installation:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install python3.8 python3.8-venv python3.8-python3.8-distutils python3.8-dev python3.8-dbg

Update pip

python3.8 -m pip install --upgrade pip

Output

Defaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeable
Requirement already satisfied: pip in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (22.0.2)
Collecting pip
 pip-22.3.1-py3-none-any.whl (2.1 MB)
 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2.1/2.1 MB 2.5 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing collected packages: pip
Successfully installed pip-22.3.1

Access your project folder on terminal:

cd ~/dev/my_project

Create your virtual environment

I like to use .venv as virtual environment folder name, but you can use venv or whatever you want.

python3.8 -m venv .venv

Checking the folder/files created:

✦ ❯ tree -L 2 .venv
.venv
├── bin
│ ├── activate
│ ├── activate.csh
│ ├── activate.fish
│ ├── Activate.ps1
│ ├── pip
│ ├── pip3
│ ├── pip3.8
│ ├── python -> python3.8
│ ├── python3 -> python3.8
│ └── python3.8 -> /usr/bin/python3.8
├── include
├── lib
│ └── python3.8
├── lib64 -> lib
└── pyvenv.cfg

Activating the virtual environment

Visual Studio Code and another editors can automatically detect the virtual environment and activate it. In the terminal you should do this:

source .venv/bin/activate

And now, you can use the python that you need:

❯ python --version
Python 3.8.16

Post-setup

After this, I usually install autopep8 and flake8 for linting/formatting.

pip install autopep8 flake8

Thanks for reading! Leave a comment and click the heart icon!

Links:

• How to Install Python 3.8 on Ubuntu 22.04/20.04