pipenv vs virtualenv: What are the differences?
# Introduction
This Markdown code highlights the key differences between pipenv and virtualenv.
1. **Installation**: Pipenv automatically creates and manages a virtual environment for your projects, including the necessary dependencies, making it easier to work on different projects with different dependencies. In contrast, virtualenv requires you to manually create and activate a virtual environment for each project, which can be more time-consuming.
2. **Dependency Management**: Pipenv combines both package management and virtual environment management in one tool, simplifying the process of installing, upgrading, and removing dependencies. Virtualenv focuses solely on creating isolated virtual environments without providing built-in dependency management features.
3. **Pipfile vs. requirements.txt**: Pipenv uses a Pipfile to declare project dependencies and a Pipfile.lock to lock dependencies to specific versions, ensuring consistent builds across different environments. Virtualenv traditionally relies on a requirements.txt file for listing dependencies, which doesn't address the issue of reproducible builds.
4. **Runtime Isolation**: Pipenv isolates your project's runtime environment by implementing both virtual environment creation and dependency resolution, preventing potential conflicts with system-wide packages. While virtualenv offers isolation through virtual environments, it doesn't include dependency management by default, leaving room for conflicts with system-level packages.
5. **Integration with Pip**: Pipenv directly integrates with pip, allowing you to install packages using pip within the Pipenv-managed virtual environment. Virtualenv, on the other hand, requires you to activate the virtual environment before running pip commands, adding an extra step to the package installation process.
6. **Development Workflow**: Pipenv streamlines the development workflow by providing commands for common tasks like installing dependencies, running scripts, and managing environments, enhancing productivity. Virtualenv, being more focused on virtual environment creation, lacks these additional workflow features, requiring developers to rely on external tools for similar functionality.
In Summary, Pipenv offers a more integrated and streamlined approach to managing dependencies and virtual environments compared to virtualenv, simplifying the development process.