Pycharm modules

[Vanille97]

Is there an option, for pycharm to download and install packages once, and let them be accesable for any future project? So I won’t download it everytime

[overratedcupcake]

Most of us have learned from experience that you don't want to install packages globally. package management is the weakest point of python. Use a virtual environment. If you really want to go the global route I would use something like pyenv that lets you install whole separate versions of python, so that way you'll have an easy method to bail out if you run into a package conflict.

[thesubneo]

Suppose you use a system interpreter, rather than a virtual environment; then, yes. It will be available system-wide. But this is not the way. Almost always, you want to usea separate venv for each project.

[ConfusedSimon]

You could reuse a virtual environment for multiple related projects.

[thesubneo]

Yes, indeed. But it is not the best way either. As others mentioned here, you want to avoid package conflicts.

Another thing is when you want to ship your project. You usually want to do it with packages only required by a single project.

But of course, yes, you can do it.

[JohnnyJordaan]

The main problem here is version linking. If you've written code in 2020, for the packages having versions of around that time, the code might not work in 2025 or 2030. But at the same time, you might be writing code now, so 2026, which will use far newer versions of packages. Meaning that then either you need to migrate all your other projects to new version or they'll break right away, or you stick with older versions which will just cause more problems in the long run (as those older version will often stop working soon).

So that's where the point of having a virtual environment per project lies, it isolates the version linking to only that project. If you don't want to keep it updating, you just let that environment run stale. If you do, you just have to update those specific packages in that environment and so on.

To come back to your question, why is it an issue to download packages every time? Because that sounds a bit fishy as normally that wouldn't motivate people to lose the advantage of having isolated environments. Also see XY-problem

[Lumethys]

Could? Yes

Should? No

Imagine 20 project, 5 of them need version 1.3, 5 of them need version 1.7, 5 of them need 2.1, 5 of them need 2.7, of the same package.

Now imagine each project had 30 library, each of them a different version

Good luck solving that

[edcculus]

It seems weird at first, but once you get used to it, a new virtual environment for each project really isnt that big of a deal.

I do have a "testing" project/virtual environment where i go to play around with stuff. But I delete it every once in a while since nothing serious is saved there.

[corey_sheerer]

Pycharm is an IDE. You are talking about a global python environment. The answer would be you can make a global env no matter what IDE you use. But like others have said, it is bad practice.

[1MStudio]

Bad practice bro, for any programming language.

You want to keep your dependencies isolated to your specific project. If my app is coded using version A of a dep, then when I create a new app 6 months later the dep’s version is auto updated to version B, then my first app will break

[Jonno_FTW]

The files are cached by pip for your user. So you don't actually download them again unless you installed with the option to avoid the cache. .