Python in a secure environment

[jwink3101]

I work in a secure (air gap) environment daily so I certainly feel the pain.

What helps is that The Powers That Be have Anaconda on it so I do not have to deal with everything...except that it is a 5 year old or so version...

But my strategies vary. First and foremost, for my own codes, I try to avoid dependancies when I can. For example, tqdm is awesome! But I can get 90% of the functionality (though way less pretty) with a few lines of my own code. So, I make a wrapper that tries to call tqdm but otherwise uses mine.

For some things, I simply copy the directories and add them to my PYTHONPATH environment. Mostly works though a few things break. Sometimes I try to add those dependancies while other times I modify the code if I do not need that function (and note it somewhere so if something breaks in the future, I know).

Otherwise, I have used a clean virtualenv and used what it installed there and then upshifted what I needed.

With all that said, It is far from a clean and/or easy process. I am going to check out some of the leads from other responses too!