While there are many python environment management solutions, a problem that has vexed me for a while is conveniently making short scripts with portable shebang lines (the "#!/something" at the top of a script) that can find venv or conda environments for directly running them as executables. I created this runvenv program to try to solve this, with lines like "#!/usr/bin/env -S runvenv py313")
The singular purpose of runvenv is to go through a useful ordered search to find a named environment directory, and then run that python executable so that the python script ends up within the environment. Python detects where it is run from, so as long as the right one is executed, the rest of the environment is used properly.
This supports a bunch of approaches. For example, it works for making scripts with a named environment right in the same directory of the script, and then it will find that environment without activating anything, regardless of the current working directory, and even if the script is run from a symlink. It also supports a user level collection of venvs, and a system level collection of venvs. And if it can't find those, it goes through all of the places conda environments are typically found, and looks for a matching conda environment to use.
I've been using it a good bit since I wrote it, and I feel like it's one of those things that "just works". It has been a game changer for me in making little python scripts with a python environment dependency, since I can just drop the name of the environment in the shebang line, and it will "do the right thing", find it, and use it to run the python code.
There are a few other tools like "uv" and "pipx" that can handle shebang lines properly, within their own environment ecosystem. But this one works flexibly for shebangs with standard venvs project-level or shared, or with the conda environments I encounter regularly in data science. I put a bunch of usage examples in the README.
This "should" be cross-platform, as a good attempt was made, but I would appreciate some feedback on this from people trying it out, as platforms can be quite heterogeneous and there are surely some cases to account for.
If I understood correctly: you may also be interested in https://github.com/brettcannon/python-launcher (by one of the core Python devs). Although that specifically targets Linux. On Windows, the provided launcher is already aware of venvs (https://peps.python.org/pep-0486/) - although it only uses the currently activated venv, to my understanding.
Personally I'm not sure I like the idea of searching based on a folder name, as opposed to having some explicit registry of venvs. But this does seem to be more functionality than the existing options offer.
Out of curiousity, how do you typically make and organize your venvs?
While there are many python environment management solutions, a problem that has vexed me for a while is conveniently making short scripts with portable shebang lines (the "#!/something" at the top of a script) that can find venv or conda environments for directly running them as executables. I created this runvenv program to try to solve this, with lines like "#!/usr/bin/env -S runvenv py313")
The singular purpose of runvenv is to go through a useful ordered search to find a named environment directory, and then run that python executable so that the python script ends up within the environment. Python detects where it is run from, so as long as the right one is executed, the rest of the environment is used properly.
This supports a bunch of approaches. For example, it works for making scripts with a named environment right in the same directory of the script, and then it will find that environment without activating anything, regardless of the current working directory, and even if the script is run from a symlink. It also supports a user level collection of venvs, and a system level collection of venvs. And if it can't find those, it goes through all of the places conda environments are typically found, and looks for a matching conda environment to use.
I've been using it a good bit since I wrote it, and I feel like it's one of those things that "just works". It has been a game changer for me in making little python scripts with a python environment dependency, since I can just drop the name of the environment in the shebang line, and it will "do the right thing", find it, and use it to run the python code.
There are a few other tools like "uv" and "pipx" that can handle shebang lines properly, within their own environment ecosystem. But this one works flexibly for shebangs with standard venvs project-level or shared, or with the conda environments I encounter regularly in data science. I put a bunch of usage examples in the README.
This "should" be cross-platform, as a good attempt was made, but I would appreciate some feedback on this from people trying it out, as platforms can be quite heterogeneous and there are surely some cases to account for.
If I understood correctly: you may also be interested in https://github.com/brettcannon/python-launcher (by one of the core Python devs). Although that specifically targets Linux. On Windows, the provided launcher is already aware of venvs (https://peps.python.org/pep-0486/) - although it only uses the currently activated venv, to my understanding.
Personally I'm not sure I like the idea of searching based on a folder name, as opposed to having some explicit registry of venvs. But this does seem to be more functionality than the existing options offer.
Out of curiousity, how do you typically make and organize your venvs?