This guide will walk you through creating and using Python's built-in virtual environment (venv) for isolating project dependencies.

venv is a tool that allows you to create isolated environments for your Python projects. Each virtual environment has its own Python executable and can have its own set of libraries, independent of the system-wide Python installation. This helps prevent version conflicts between different projects.

• Python 3.3+: venv is included in Python 3.3 and later.
• pip: The Python package installer should be installed alongside Python.

Make sure you have Python 3 installed on your system. You can check by running:

python3 --version  # macOS/Linux
python --version   # Windows

Install virtualenv

pip3 install virtualenv  # macOS/Linux
pip install virtualenv   # Windows

Navigate to your project directory and create a new virtual environment with the following command:

On MacOS

python3 -m venv venv

On Windows

python -m venv venv

This command creates a folder named venv in your project directory that contains a fresh Python environment.

Once your environment is created, you need to activate it:

On macOS/Linux:

source venv/bin/activate

On Windows:

venv\Scripts\activate

When the virtual environment is activated, your shell prompt will change to show the name of the virtual environment, like so:

(venv) user@machine:path/to/project$

Once the virtual environment is activated, you can install Python packages using pip:

On MacOS

pip3 install <package-name>

On Windows

pip install <package-name>

deactivate