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Using Virtual Environments in Jupyter Notebook and Python

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4 views

Using Virtual Environments in Jupyter Notebook and Python

Uploaded by

unnikallikattu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Using Virtual Environments in Jupyter

Notebook and Python


02 Feb 2019
Are you working with Jupyter Notebook and Python? Do you
also want to benefit from virtual environments? In this
tutorial you will see how to do just that
with Anaconda or Virtualenv/venv.

Before we start, what is a virtual environment and why do


you need it? A virtual environment is an isolated working
copy of Python. This means that each environment can have
its own dependencies or even its own Python versions. This
is useful if you need different versions of Python or packages
for different projects. This also keeps things tidy when
testing packages and making sure your main Python
installation stays healthy.

Create Virtual Environment with


Virtualenv/venv
A commonly used tool for virtual environments in Python
is virtualenv. Since Python 3.3, a subset of virtualenv has
been integrated in the Python standard library under
the venv module. If you are using Python 2, you can install
virtualenv with:
pip install --user virtualenv
Now, you can create a virtual environment with:
virtualenv myenv
where myenv can be replaced with the name you want for
your virtual environment. The virtual environment can be
found in the myenv folder. For Python >= 3.3, you can create
a virtual environment with:
python -m venv myenv
After you have created your virtual environment, you can
activate the virtual environment with:
source myenv/bin/activate
To deactivate the virtual environment, you can
run deactivate. To delete the virtual environment you just
need to remove the folder with the virtual environment
(e.g. rm -r myenv). For further information, have a read in
the virtualenv documentation or venv documentation.

Create Virtual Environment with Anaconda


Let’s have a look how to create an virtual environment
with Anaconda. Anaconda is a Python (and R) distribution
that has the goal to simplify package management and
deployment for scientific computing. After
the installation you can create the conda virtual environment
with:
conda create -n myenv
where myenv is the name of your new environment. If you
want a specific Python version that is not your current
version, you can type:
conda create -n myenv python=3.6
The environment is then stored in the envs folder in your
Anaconda directory. After you have created the enviroment,
you can activate it by typing:
conda activate myenv
If you now run python, you’ll see that you are in your freshly
created virtual environment. To deactivate the environment
you can type conda deactivate and you can list all the
available environments on your machine with conda env list.
To remove an enviroment you can type:
conda env remove -n myenv
After creating your environment, you can install the
packages you need besides the one already installed by
conda. You can find more information on how to manage
conda environments in this user guide.

Add Virtual Environment to Jupyter


Notebook
Jupyter Notebook makes sure that the IPython kernel is
available, but you have to manually add a kernel with a
different version of Python or a virtual environment. First,
you need to activate your virtual environment. Next,
install ipykernel which provides the IPython kernel for
Jupyter:
pip install --user ipykernel
Next you can add your virtual environment to Jupyter by
typing:
python -m ipykernel install --user --name=myenv
This should print the following:
Installed kernelspec myenv in /home/user/.local/share/jupyter/kernels/myenv
In this folder you will find a kernel.json file which should
look the following way if you did everything correctly:
{
"argv": [
"/home/user/anaconda3/envs/myenv/bin/python",
"-m",
"ipykernel_launcher",
"-f",
"{connection_file}"
],
"display_name": "myenv",
"language": "python"
}
That’s all to it! Now you are able to choose the conda
environment as a kernel in Jupyter. Here is what that would
look like in JupyterLab:
Remove Virtual Environment from Jupyter
Notebook
After you deleted your virtual environment, you’ll want to
remove it also from Jupyter. Let’s first see which kernels are
available. You can list them with:
jupyter kernelspec list
This should return something like:
Available kernels:
myenv /home/user/.local/share/jupyter/kernels/myenv
python3 /usr/local/share/jupyter/kernels/python3
Now, to uninstall the kernel, you can type:
jupyter kernelspec uninstall myenv

Further Reading
In this documentation you can find more information on
installing IPython kernels. There have been developments to
simplify managing packages with Pipenv:

Pipenv is a tool that aims to bring the best of all packaging


worlds (bundler, composer, npm, cargo, yarn, etc.) to the
Python world. Windows is a first-class citizen, in our world.
(Source)
In Pipenv & Virtual Environments, you’ll find a helpful guide
that explains working with packages and virtual
environments.

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