I’m a dummy. I pulled the old “pretend to ask an honest question but really to confirm your belief” trick and, shockingly-not, got refuted. My small sample seems to like making their Python virtual environments outside of their projects.
Background
I do a lot of Python explaining (Py-splaining?) and, contrary to the “see how much our Won-The-War framework can do in minus ten lines of hello”, I try to suck it up and show the right way. This usually means, make a virtual environment. It also means make a package, which ranks up there with “drop a frozen turkey in a deep fryer using your teeth” on the scale of holiday fun.
Virtual environments are a little squirrelly to explain. Like “mobile first” for web dev, I have committed to Py3-first for teaching, which means you get pyvenv for free. I then show making a setup.py and doing pip install -e . (or python ./setup.py develop), binding that virtualenv to this project.
In my mind, that means the virtualenv is part of this project directory. If I give up on the project, I delete the directory, and everything goes with it. If I’m using SQLite, I store my .sqlite file in that working directory as well. If I’m doing JS frontend stuff, my node_modules is in that directory. It thus makes sense that my virtualenv (or plural, if I’m doing multiple Python versions) should be in the same working directory. It’s an artifact of that project.
In fact, Python’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python” advertises this workflow.
I posed the question on Twitter because PyCharm, when making a new project, wants the virtualenv outside of the to-be-created project directory. I was looking to bolster my viewpoint.
The Herd Is Wrong
The wisdom of crowds voted against me 12-6. That’s the trouble with crowds, they are only wise when they agree with me. I guess that’s the difference between a crowd and a mob.
I think I’ll march on, teaching to firmly associate the virtualenv with the project, holding up the Hitchhiker’s Guide as my certificate of authenticity. But I won’t file a likely-disruptive ticket in PyCharm.
