pipenv

Pipenv is a packaging tool for Python that aims to provide a cohesive workflow for dependency management and virtual environments. It uses a Pipfile to declare project dependencies and a Pipfile.lock to record resolved versions, replacing the traditional requirements.txt approach and separate virtualenv management. The goal is to offer deterministic, reproducible installations across different environments.

When you run pipenv install, Pipenv creates a virtual environment for the project (if one does not already exist) and installs the specified packages into it. It resolves dependencies and writes them to Pipfile.lock to enable repeatable installs. The Pipfile can separate runtime dependencies from development dependencies via [packages] and [dev-packages], and a [requires] section can specify the Python version.

Pipenv stores the virtual environment either in a central location on the system or, optionally, inside the project directory if configured (for example via the PIPENV_VENV_IN_PROJECT setting). It also provides commands to interact with the environment, such as pipenv shell to activate the environment and pipenv run to execute commands within it. Other commands include pipenv lock, pipenv update, and pipenv graph for dependency visualization.

History and status: Pipenv was created to streamline Python project setup by unifying dependency declaration, resolution, and virtual environment management. It gained popularity in the late 2010s, but development has slowed in recent years, and some projects prefer alternatives such as Poetry or pip-tools. It remains usable and cross-platform, supporting Windows, macOS, and Linux, and is suitable for projects that want a Pipfile-based workflow.