Easy alias for dealing with Python Virtualenvs

There’s something oddly comforting about a shell function that takes care of boring things for you.

This venv() helper does exactly that.

It checks whether you’re already in an environment, spins up a fresh one if needed, installs your dependencies, and activates it.

To use this venv function, you’ll need to add it to your shell’s configuration file. If you’re using zsh, add the following function to your ~/.zshrc file. If you’re using bash, add it to your ~/.bashrc instead.

Don’t forget to source ~/.zshrc or source ~/.bashrc later!

This requires uv to work

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24


venv() {
  # Exit early if already in a virtual environment
  if [[ -n "$VIRTUAL_ENV" ]]; then
    echo "A virtual environment is already active at: $VIRTUAL_ENV"
    return 1
  fi

  # Create .venv if missing
  if [[ ! -d ".venv" ]]; then
    echo "Creating virtual environment..."
    uv venv || { echo "Failed to create venv"; return 1 }

    # Install dependencies if requirements.txt exists
    if [[ -f "requirements.txt" ]]; then
      echo "Installing dependencies..."
      uv pip install -r requirements.txt || { echo "Dependency install failed"; return 1 }
    else
      echo "No requirements.txt found; skipping installation."
    fi
  fi

  # Activate the environment
  source .venv/bin/activate
}

Of course, if you use uv run for running things anyway, then you don’t need this!