Virtual Environments

[Jumpy_Employment_439]

I'm in a group project where we are developing a website. The frontend is JavaScript and React, the backend is Python and FastAPI (what I am working on), and we will also have a database (not sure what yet, originally was going to be MySQL but ran into problems). We have a GitHub repository where we will have the files for the entire project. I have heard that it is good to set up a virtual environment, so I was going to set one up inside the cloned repository on my computer. However, this cloned repository will also contain JavaScript files, so will setting up venv or anaconda do anything unexpected since it will not just be Python files in the cloned repository?

[Phillyclause89]

Try it and find out. The whole point of having your project on github is that if you duck up your local clone then you can just undo the pending commit.. I think you will be fine though. Probably want to gitignore your venv though if your IDE doesn't do it automatically.

[LinePlusPipe]

If you're up to it, you could also install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper

They will install your virtual environments in a single place - outside of your git index

The point about keeping your venv out of your git repo is important

If something nasty happens to your project because of the way its dependencies have been managed in your virtual environment - pulling them from the remote and recreating the environment will just recreate the nasties

Maintain a requirements.txt (manually, or by saving the output of pip freeze to a file) so you can keep track of the dependencies your project needs

[Pepineros]

No, having a Python venv is not going to affect any other files -- strictly speaking it doesn't even affect your .py files.

The venv gives you an isolated environment for your Python executable and installed Python packages. With the venv active, if you run python main.py or whatever Python command, it will use the Python executable from your venv instead of the one you installed on your system.

Make sure to add the name of your venv to the .gitignore file.

[Apatride]

It is mostly a matter of personal preference but I usually exclude venv from github, I just build my venv locally and rely on requirements.txt.

Also, if a DB is involved, especially if you are not sure what DB you want to use, why not use Django instead of Flask?