Complete Guide to Virtual Environments (Virtualenv) in Python

A virtual environment in Python is an isolated space for installing libraries and packages for a specific project without affecting the main system. This is particularly useful when developing multiple projects that require different versions of libraries. Using a virtual environment helps avoid version conflicts, ensures project isolation and stability, and increases security by preventing unintended changes to system files. Virtualenv can be installed using the command pip install virtualenv. To create a virtual environment, run the command virtualenv venv, where venv is the name of the folder where the virtual environment will be created. The activation process depends on the operating system, with different commands for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Once activated, packages can be installed using pip install, and the virtual environment can be deactivated with the command deactivate. The list of installed packages can be saved to a requirements.txt file using pip freeze, and the same environment can be recreated on another system using pip install -r requirements.txt. Overall, virtual environments help run Python projects in an isolated and conflict-free manner. By using virtual environments, developers can ensure stability and security for their projects.