[pipenv] Easily Manage Packages and Virtual Environments

1. What is Pipenv?

Pipenv is a tool that aims the best of all packaging worlds to the Python world. It automatically creates and manage a virtualenv for our project, as well as add/removes packages from our Pipfile as our install/uninstall packages.

 

Pipenv is primarily meant to provide users and developers of application with an easy method to setup a working environment.

 

1.1 What is Pip?

Pip is a package manger for Python packages, or module if we like. A package contains all the files we need for a module. And modules are Python code libraries we can include in our project.

 

1.2 What is Virtual Environment?

A virtual environment is a Python environment such that the Python interpreter, libraries and scripts installed into it are isolated from those installed in other virtual environments. A virtual environment is a directory tree which contains Python executable files and other files which indicate that is a virtual environment.

 

2. How to use Pipenv?

Step 1 : Install pipenv packages

$ pip install pipenv

 

Step 3 : Move to designated folder

$ cd my_practice/

 

Step 4 : Creating virtual environment and installing packages

When we use the pipenv command, it first checks whether a virtual environment exists in the Project. If the virtual environment is not installed, then the virtual environment will be installed in the project.

 

$ pipenv install requests 

Creating a virtualenv for this project...
Pipfile: /home/users/my_practice/Pipfile
Using /usr/bin/python3.8 (3.8.10) to create virtualenv...
⠦ Creating virtual environment...

✔ Successfully created virtual environment! 
Virtualenv location: /home/users/.local/share/virtualenvs/my_practice-qrBNbtx-
Creating a Pipfile for this project...
Installing requests...

Pipfile.lock not found, creating...
Locking [packages] dependencies...
Building requirements...
Resolving dependencies...
✔ Success!

 

The dev-packages is for development requirements. So stuf like linters, unit test libraries, etc. All that is not needed on the user's machine. To install a package as dev-requirement, add -d or --dev to install command.

 

$ pipenv install pytest -d 

Installing pytest...
Adding pytest to Pipfile's [dev-packages]...
✔ Installation Succeeded 
Pipfile.lock (fbd99e) out of date, updating to (9e60ab)...
Locking [packages] dependencies...
Building requirements...
Resolving dependencies...
✔ Success! 
Locking [dev-packages] dependencies...
Building requirements...
Resolving dependencies...
✔ Success! 
Updated Pipfile.lock (bb86d5e8cd294cb34e55b4d26f021d673efacad14a065a789827a38d599e60ab)!
Installing dependencies from Pipfile.lock (9e60ab)...
Installing dependencies from Pipfile.lock (9e60ab)...
To activate this project's virtualenv, run pipenv shell.
Alternatively, run a command inside the virtualenv with pipenv run.

 

Step 4 : Activate virtual environment

# Activate
$ pipenv shell 

# Deactivate 
$ exit

 

Step 5 : Run the Project file

# Way1
$ pipenv shell
$ python script.py 

# Way2 
$ pipenv run python script.py

 

Step 6 : Removing virtual environments and packages 

# Removing installed packages 
$ pipenv uninstall pytest 

# Removing virtual environment 
$ pipenv --rm

 

3. Pipfile

 

3.1 Pipfile

Pipfile basically just tells us which package we have installed and what version of that packages we're using.

 

The [package] section specify what we install with its version. If we didn't specify a specific version of package, then it will be stored in package = "*" format. However, this can be also risky because we don't want to take any changes of updates breaking our project.

 

• source : Denote where we're downloading packages from
• packages : Installed packages = Version(* if we didn't specify a specific version.)
• dev-packages : Specify installed packages for development requirements
• requires : Specify which version of Python that we're using. We can change version by changing to wanted version.

 

3.2 Pipfile.lock

Pipfile.lock is another file that we're not supposed to touch. It's just a file that gets generated and produces deterministic builds. This file is a generated file that has more detailed information about our current environment.

 

This file contains the dependencies that are installed when we installed the library. And also it has the exact version of each of these packages that were installed. And it will absolutely give us the exact same environment every time.

 

4. Pipenv features

• pipenv --venv : pipenv --venv returns the location of virtual environment directory.
• pipenv graph : pipenv graph is only showing the graph of development dependencies, and leaving out the regular dependencies.
• pipenv check : Check security vulnerabilites.
• pipenv lock : Set lockfile - before deployment.

 

 

Source from :

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDYL22QNiWk&list=PL-osiE80TeTskrapNbzXhwoFUiLCjGgY7&index=22 
• https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_pip.asp  
• https://pipenv.pypa.io/en/latest/  
• https://pipenv-fork.readthedocs.io/en/latest/advanced.html  
• https://gist.github.com/bradtraversy/c70a93d6536ed63786c434707b898d55