Once you activate your virtual environment, you’ll need to identify how to manage it and its accompanying packages. Note: While it's possible to open a virtual environment folder as a workspace, doing so is not recommended and might cause issues with using the Python extension. When you then run a Python program within that environment, you know that it's running against only those specific packages. When you install into a virtual environment, any packages you install are installed only in that subfolder. A virtual environment is a folder that contains a copy (or symlink) of a specific interpreter. To prevent such clutter, developers often create a virtual environment for a project. If you install packages in that environment, though, in time it will become crowded and make it difficult to properly test an application.

Working in the global environment is an easy way to get started. Any packages that you install or uninstall affect the global environment and all programs that you run within it. For example, if you just run python, python3, or py at a new terminal (depending on how you installed Python), you're running in that interpreter's global environment. They aren't specific to a particular project. Python environments Global environmentsīy default, any Python interpreter installed runs in its own global environment.

Note: If you'd like to become more familiar with the Python programming language, review More Python resources. An 'environment' in Python is the context in which a Python program runs and consists of an interpreter and any number of installed packages.

This article discusses the helpful Python environments features available in Visual Studio Code.

Configure IntelliSense for cross-compilingĮdit Using Python environments in VS Code.

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