Feature: support detection of existing virtual environments for a project

[LordFlashmeow]

I use pycharm for development, so my virtual environments are created automatically when I make a new project. It would be really convenient if there was a function—maybe addvenv which created the .venv file instead of prompting to create a whole new virtual environment.

I know I can make the file myself, but it seems a little odd that the plugin is smart enough to detect a virtualenv, but won't allow you to add it.

[MichaelAquilina]

Hi there! I don't use pycharm so I'm not very aware of how it creates/stores its virtualenvs.

Would you mind providing some information about the virtualenvs it creates? The following would definitely be useful:

• Name of the virtual environment in relation to the project / directory
• Location of the virtual environment on the file system

[LordFlashmeow]

With pycharm, the default is to create the virtual environment in a folder named venv (although it can be changed to whatever). Inside the venv folder, there is not a folder with the project name, only the venv files.

For example:

$ tree -L 2
.
├── main.py
└── venv
    ├── bin
    ├── include
    ├── lib
    ├── pyvenv.cfg
    ├── share
    └── src

When running mkvenv with AUTOSWITCH_VIRTUAL_ENV_DIR="venv", this is the directory structure I end up with where test was the name of the folder I made the venv in:

$ tree -L 3
.
├── main.py
└── venv
    └── test
        ├── bin
        ├── lib
        └── pyvenv.cfg

[escaped]

I kind of have the same issue as I use python -m venv .venv instead of creating the environment using virtualenv. To support this, we could "simply" check whether $AUTOSWITCH_FILE is already a virtual environment (eg. does ${venv_path}/bin/activate exists or similar). If it is, we can simply load it by running source .venv/bin/activate and use deactivate to disable it again, once we leave the directory.

As a workaround, I currently use https://github.com/RobertDeRose/virtualenv-autodetect, but I would prefer using this plugin as it supports poetry and pipenv. 👍

[afeblot]

@MichaelAquilina, if I spend time trying to implement @escaped request and submit a PR, will you consider it, or is this something you don't want to see implemented in your script because it alters its current logic?

[MichaelAquilina]

@afeblot feel free to open a PR :) At the very least it provides us a better way of discussing the changes while also providing a branch for other users to test it out