# Python virtual environments

In today's article, we'll be looking at Python virtual environments.
What they are, why we need them and how to create them.

In basic, a virtual environment is an isolated environment for Python projects.
Basically a container for your specific project.
For those familiar with node modules, I find it quite similar to that.

You can have modules globally installed, and every project can access those, or you can have them project-based installed so only that project can find them.

## Why do we need virtual environments

It's because of Python's way of downloading packages that we want to differentiate between projects.
In general, I find it a good choice to have project-based environments anyway since it will narrow down your error possibility.

Python can have a hard time differentiating between versions of a package to narrow it down, so let's say we want `packageA` but `projectA` needs `v1.0.0` and `projectB` needs v2.0.0`.
As it would be installed globally, there is no way to differentiate between those two.
If we installed them in our virtual environment, each project would use its own specified version.

## Python virtual environments

For my article, I'll be using `venv`. However, multiple options can create virtual environments for you.

Open up your project in a terminal and run the following command.

```bash
python -m venv .venv
```

The last argument, `.venv`, is the virtual environment's location and can be anything you want.
In this case, a folder called `.venv` is created.

![Python virtual environment files](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1620971938506/Wk4JjRkge.png)

We can activate this virtual environment by running the following command.

```bash
source .venv/bin/active
```

You will see it's active if the terminal places the environment name in front of your arrow like this.

![Python activate virtual environment](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1620972082907/cvp3Kn-ak.png)

Now, if we run `pip install`, it will install specific packages inside our virtual environment.

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