Python virtualenv shell prompts

Python virtualenv shell prompts

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A quick note so next time I’m trying to figure out how to get a useful shell prompt with my current python virtualenv indicated, I’ll know how to do it.

If you don’t know what this means, this article is not for you (yet!).

Problem

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You’ve got several python codebases using different virtualenv’s.

You are activating a virtual environment and your beautiful prompt (using Starship of course) shows the following:

:~/code/python_app1 (develop) [*] via 🐍 v3.10.2 (.venv)

The .venv on the end indicates that your virtualenv is active, but which one is activated? I like to keep my virtualenv in poetry inside my code and add the directory to .gitignore which leads to all of my virtualenvs showing up as (.venv) .

Solution

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Since we cannot yet pass a prompt for virtualenvs when creating initializing poetry, we can edit the .venv/pyvenv.cfg file and add the following line to it:

prompt = CHANGEME

This prompt value will get picked up by Starship when you are using the standard python prompt fragment configuration.