Creating a virtual environment for Python development

Written by Kaan Akşit, 20 February 2025

Disclamer: This article is only tested under Ubuntu 24.10.

Development often requires installing custom components in a system. It is helpful to consider having a virtual environment, which you can also carry over to the other computers as needed. To create your own virtual environment, please use the following syntax in your favorite terminal program:

python3 -m venv PATH

Here, PATH should be replaced with the directory location where you want to install your virtual envorinment. Once you created your virtual environment, you can activate the environment by typing the following syntax in your terminal:

source PATH/bin/activate

If you need this working envorinment to be default, you can add the above line at the end of your ~/bash.rc in your home directory. This way, it will automatically be activated when you start a new terminal session. Given you have successfully created your virtual environment, you can now install packages using pip3 without breaking the system packages:

pip3 install PACKAGE

where, PACKAGE is the name of the package you want to install.