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I'm trying to wrap my head around how to effectively use virtualenv. I made a test environment called "quandl". In this environment I imported the Quandl package and am playing around with some examples from their site.

While in my virtual environment, when I type ls I see my home directory and all its sub-folders. Does the test environment create its own copies of each of those folders? If that's the case, then with every virtual environment I create from here on out I will see different folders every time I load a new environment. Not necessarily a bad thing, I just want to understand how this all works.

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No, a virtual environment does not clone the directories in $HOME. A virtual environment is an isolated project-specific environment for invoking the Python interpreter and installing Python packages. This allows you to isolate the Python dependencies of multiple projects from each other.

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  • But then if I install a certain version of a package that I need for a specific project, where does this package get installed to? And how would another virtual environment know to ignore this package? – whatwhatwhat Aug 14 '16 at 5:27
  • That is what activation (and deactivation) of a virtual environment does: to specify the virtual environment that you want to use (activate) and installation will then be specific to that activated virtual environment. – edwinksl Aug 14 '16 at 5:28
  • Is there any way I can see the different virtual environments that I am creating? Like, do they get stored somewhere? – whatwhatwhat Aug 14 '16 at 5:31
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    You can do it by giving the all virtual environments the same name (common ones I see are venv and env) and then search for these names. You can also check out virtualenvwrapper which provides a way to manage multiple virtual environments. – edwinksl Aug 14 '16 at 5:34

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