microvenv 2025.0

A minimal re-implementation of Python's venv module plus utilities

microvenv

Create a minimal virtual environment (and utility code around environments).

The key purpose of this module is for when the venv module has been removed from the standard library by your Python distribution. Because venv is not available on PyPI and is developed in the stdlib, it is not possible to install it using pip or simply copy the code and expect it to work with older versions of Python. This module then attempts to be that portable alternative for creating virtual environments.

In general, though, using the venv module should be preferred and this module used as a fallback.

There is also utility code around virtual environments. See the docs for details.

CLI Usage

NOTE: The CLI is not available on Windows.

python -m microvenv [--without-scm-ignore-files] [env_dir=".venv"]

If an argument is provided to the script, it is used as the path to create the virtual environment in. Otherwise, the virtual environment is created in .venv.

For programmatic usage, there is the create() function, which is analogous to the venv.create() function.

def create(env_dir: os.PathLike[str] | str = ".venv", *, scm_ignore_files={"git"}) -> None

The microvenv/_create.py file is also small enough to have its contents passed in via the -c flag to python.

Differences compared to the venv module

The code operates similarly to py -m venv --symlinks --without-pip .venv, except that:

• There are no activation scripts (you can execute python in the virtual environment directly)
• Windows is not supported