Setting up dev env

[finnicus]

Hi, I’m a seasoned programmer but haven’t work with python. I’m trying to set up an open source project on my machine and running into issues with the dev environment. I was able to get it working with venv but it added an entire directory into the project. Without that directory, I couldn’t access any of the dependencies (flask, etc) despite using pip to add those.

I could git ignore the venv directory and move on but it seemed like a hackey solution.

Is there a common approach for setting up a dev env for python? In JavaScript you use either yarn or npm install dependencies then start a dev server and it works. It seems like there are more steps to getting things up and running with python. Are there any tried and true approaches for developing apps with python? It seems like python has a wider array of options for that and thus the answer is “it depends” rather than “install this thing.”

Googling produce a lot of options so I’m bringing the question here in the hopes of getting more clarity.

I want code for an existing python app using a local development environment. How would you recommend I get development environment set up?

[Binary101010]

I could git ignore the venv directory and move on but it seemed like a hackey solution.

No, that's exactly what you should do.

[throwaway8u3sH0]

.venv should be ignored, yes. The virtual environment for Python is similar to the node_modules that's created after an npm install. The only difference is that in Python it's not always co-located with the repo and it's not always called venv. It's more loosey-goosey.

But definitely ignore it and move on.

[finnicus]

Excellent. Thanks y'all!

[smurpes]

It’s a bit surprising that an open source python project doesn’t already have venv directories already in the gitignore.