veman is a lightweight virtual environment manager using venv. With veman it is easier to manage multiple environments.
Note: veman is under active development and currently supports Bash in FreeBSD, Linux & macOS.
veman aims to be a simple manager for Python's venv package. The intention of veman is to be a comprehensive companion tool for venv, facilitating the creation/activation & management of virtual environments, with some extra features that aids development with Python.
veman is primarily developed for Linux & macOS. veman does not yet support Windows. Windows compatibility will most likely be implemented in a future version but it is currently not a prioritised feature.
- GitHub: https://github.com/tranbom/veman
- GitLab: https://gitlab.com/tranbom/veman
- PyPi: https://pypi.org/project/veman
- Documentation: https://tranbom.io/veman/
Install via pipx:
pipx install veman
Using pipx is the preferred method to install veman.
Installing with pip is not supported when the Python environment is externally managed (for example in Debian 12), see PEP-668 for more information.
The default installation directory used by pipx is ~/.local/bin which needs to be in your PATH.
Update the PATH manually or run pipx ensurepath.
- Python >=3.9
- venv
Install pip, pipx & venv from the Debian repository:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3-pip python3-venv pipx
Install veman with pipx and update PATH (if necessary):
pipx install veman
pipx ensurepath
veman create or
veman create <environment-name>
Use -a or --activate after the create command to automatically activate
the venv after creation.
Examples:
veman create djangoenv
veman create -a flaskenv
veman create --activate testenv1
veman activate or
veman activate <environment-name>
Example:
veman activate djangoenv
deactivate (inside an active venv)
veman list
veman delete or veman delete <environment-name>
Example: veman delete djangoenv
Create a temporary environment which will be deleted immediately when deactivating the environment.
veman temp
To exit & delete the temporary environment type deactivate
veman supports creating multiple temporary environments simultaneously.
veman creates a separate bash history file for each venv.
The history of bash commands executed inside an activated venv is saved in the root folder of the venv as .veman_history and everytime a virtual environment is activated the bash history will be restored.
The bash builtin history will print the environments history when a venv is activated and
when the virtual environment is deactivated history will automatically switch back to using
the regular bash history file (usually ~/.bash_history).
veman also has its own history command which can be used without having to activate
a venv, making it easy to find which commands have been run in different environments.
veman history <environment-name> will list the bash history for a single venv.
veman history --all will print the bash history for all venvs, which can be useful to
quickly find a command in the history across environments. Currently there is no specific order of the
venvs in which the history is printed.
The --verbose option will print some additional details, such as venv name and line number.
Various components of a venv can be upgraded with veman.
Running veman upgrade <environment-name> will upgrade the following:
- Core dependencies (pip + setuptools)
- Python (will be upgraded to the python version running the veman command)
- veman scripts
It is also possible to select which components to upgrade using any of the following options when running veman upgrade:
--deps- Upgrade core dependencies--python- Upgrade Python--scripts- Upgrade veman scripts
Upgrading the veman scripts can be useful when a new version of veman has been released to ensure compatibility of new veman features in a venv created with an older version of veman.
All managed venvs can be upgraded with the option --all:
veman upgrade --all
- Documentation: https://tranbom.io/veman/
veman sources ~/.bashrc in Linux & FreeBSD. veman is mainly tested in distributions that are
derivatives of Debian which automatically sources /etc/bash.bashrc.
veman sources /etc/profile and ~/.bash_profile in macOS.
- Connect a managed venv with a specific git repository (e.g., automatic cd on activate)
- User defined commands to run on activate (python and/or shell)
- Compatibility with zsh & more shells
- Command to add local paths to .pth-file in venv
- Configuration file with settings for veman (e.g., path to env directory)
- Adopt existing unmanaged venvs
- Auto-update managed venvs after veman has been upgraded
GPL-3.0-only