blakeNaccarato / template-python-vscode

Template repo for Python projects in VSCode

template-python-vscode

Template repo for Python projects in VSCode.

Tree

The files that are intended to be duplicated to the root of a project.

template_python_3.7_vscode
├── .github
│   └── workflows
│       └── close.yml
├── .vscode
│   ├── launch.json
│   └── settings.json
├── src
│   └── package_name
│       ├── __init__.py
│       └── package_name.py
├── .env
├── .flake8
├── .gitignore
├── .pylintrc
├── requirements.txt
└── setup.py

Environment File (.env)

General environment file. While developing, sometimes you need to set paths and special variables that are specific to your machine. For example, OpenCV expects to see the environment variables OPENCV_DIR, OPENCV_SAMPLES_DATA_PATH, and PYTHONPATH set appropriately. The way that you set these variables will vary by platform.

PowerShell and Set-PSEnv in Windows

You can install Set-PSEnv with Install-Module -Name Set-PsEnv. This module supports setting variables as well as prefixing with := and appending with =:. An example follows.

.env

OPENCV_DIR = C:\opencv\4.4.0
OPENCV_SAMPLES_DATA_PATH = C:\opencv\4.4.0\samples
PYTHONPATH = C:\opencv\4.4.0\python
PATH := C:\opencv\4.4.0\x64\vc15\bin

Sources

https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/Set-PsEnv/
https://github.com/rajivharris/Set-PsEnv/blob/master/README.md

python-dotenv in Python

You can install python-dotenv with pip install python-dotenv. You can then load your environment directly in Python code. However, you should avoid hardcoding environment loading like this, as end-user code is run in the end-user's environment. You can invoke dotenv in a developer context, as a pre-launch task or something of the sort. Note that you cannot prefix/append to existing environment variables with this format.

.env

OPENCV_DIR = C:\opencv\4.4.0
OPENCV_SAMPLES_DATA_PATH = C:\opencv\4.4.0\samples
PYTHONPATH = C:\opencv\4.4.0\python

https://pypi.org/project/python-dotenv/

Sourcing an .env file in ~/.bashrc

If you are working in Ubuntu or another UNIX-like system, you can put the following into your ~/.bashrc to source environment variables. You can prefix/append with a different syntax

~/.bashrc

#? Import dotenv aka .env environment variables if it is found
if [ -f ./.env ] ; then
    set -o allexport # enable shell option to export all created variables
    source ./.env # now this will export all vars instead of just one
    set +o allexport # disable shell option to export all created variables
fi

.env

OPENCV_DIR=~/opencv/4.4.0
OPENCV_SAMPLES_DATA_PATH=~/opencv/4.4.0/samples
PYTHONPATH=~/opencv/4.4.0/python
PATH=~/opencv/4.4.0/x64/vc15/bin:$PATH

Environment handling in VSCode

Aside from the approaches just discussed, VSCode configurations can also handle environment setup. From experience up to August 2020, the following approaches approaches don't always work the same for every system. So for now, it is preferable to use one of the above approaches for environment handling. There are "terminal.integrated.env.windows" and "python.envFile" keys in settings.json. There are "env" and "envFile" keys in launch.json.