How to automatically activate virtualenvs when cd'ing into a directory

Question

I have a bunch of projects in my ~/Documents. I work almost exclusively in python, so these are basically all python projects. Each one, e.g. ~/Documents/

Answer 1

Based on @MS_'s solution:

function cd() {
  builtin cd "$@"

  ## If env folder is found then activate the vitualenv
  if [[ -d ./venv ]] ; then
    source ./venv/bin/activate
  fi

  if [[ -n "$VIRTUAL_ENV" ]] ; then
    ## check the current folder belong to earlier VIRTUAL_ENV folder
    # if yes then do nothing
    # else deactivate
      parentdir="$(dirname "$VIRTUAL_ENV")"
      if [[ "$PWD"/ != "$parentdir"/* ]] ; then
        deactivate
      fi
  fi
}

Answer 2

Add following in your .bashrc or .zshrc

function cd() {
  builtin cd "$@"

  if [[ -z "$VIRTUAL_ENV" ]] ; then
    ## If env folder is found then activate the vitualenv
      if [[ -d ./.env ]] ; then
        source ./.env/bin/activate
      fi
  else
    ## check the current folder belong to earlier VIRTUAL_ENV folder
    # if yes then do nothing
    # else deactivate
      parentdir="$(dirname "$VIRTUAL_ENV")"
      if [[ "$PWD"/ != "$parentdir"/* ]] ; then
        deactivate
      fi
  fi
}

This code will not deactivate the virtualenv even if someone goes into subfolder. Inspired by answers of @agnul and @Gilles.

If the virtualenv is made by pipenv, then please consider this wiki page.

Furthermore, for added security please consider direnv.

Answer 3

This is my solution, which:

• checks if already at the currently active venv, and do nothing in that case
• if there is a venv folder, deactivate the active one if there is one
• activate the new venv whatever if there was an old one or not.

In my bash_aliases:

function cd() {
    builtin cd "$@"

    if [ $(dirname "$VIRTUAL_ENV") == $(pwd) ] ; then
        # Already at the active virtual env
        return
    fi

    if [[ -d ./venv ]] ; then
        if type deactivate > /dev/null 2>&1 ; then
            printf "Deactivating virtualenv %s\n" "$VIRTUAL_ENV"
            deactivate
        fi

        source ./venv/bin/activate
        printf "Setting up   virtualenv %s\n" "$VIRTUAL_ENV"
    fi
}

Answer 4

Rather than writing a custom script you could use direnv. It's not a zsh specific solution (for that you could try zsh-autoenv), but is well-maintained and easy to use with zsh. Once you've installed it, you'd want to put eval "$(direnv hook zsh)" at the end of your .zshrc. At that point you can do:

$ source ~/.zshrc
$ cd foo
$ echo "layout python" > .envrc
direnv: error .envrc is blocked. Run `direnv allow` to approve its content.
$ direnv allow
direnv: loading .envrc
direnv: export +VIRTUAL_ENV ~PATH

Now you should be in your virtualenv. You can test by running pip freeze to see that your virtualenv specific packages are installed. To deactivate

$ cd ..
direnv: unloading

Answer 5

For posterity: I used @MS_'s solution but ran into the problem where cding directly from one project to another deactivates the old virtualenv but doesn't activate the new one. This is a slightly modified version of that solution which solves this problem:

# auto activate virtualenv
# Modified solution based on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45216663/how-to-automatically-activate-virtualenvs-when-cding-into-a-directory/56309561#56309561
function cd() {
  builtin cd "$@"

  ## Default path to virtualenv in your projects
  DEFAULT_ENV_PATH="./env"

  ## If env folder is found then activate the vitualenv
  function activate_venv() {
    if [[ -f "${DEFAULT_ENV_PATH}/bin/activate" ]] ; then 
      source "${DEFAULT_ENV_PATH}/bin/activate"
      echo "Activating ${VIRTUAL_ENV}"
    fi
  }

  if [[ -z "$VIRTUAL_ENV" ]] ; then
    activate_venv
  else
    ## check the current folder belong to earlier VIRTUAL_ENV folder
    # if yes then do nothing
    # else deactivate then run a new env folder check
      parentdir="$(dirname ${VIRTUAL_ENV})"
      if [[ "$PWD"/ != "$parentdir"/* ]] ; then
        echo "Deactivating ${VIRTUAL_ENV}"
        deactivate
        activate_venv
      fi
  fi
}

Answer 6

Here is (yet) another solution to automatically activate a virtual environment; it's based on a number of the answers already posted here.

This will work for any Virtual Environment name or directory (not just ./env, ./venv, etc.). Also supports subdirectories, as well as cd-ing into symlinks of virtual environment (parent) folders.

This code searches for a pyvenv.cfg file instead of a particular named directory. If one is found within a subdirectory of the current folder, the environment is automatically activated. Once inside a virtual environment, that state is retained until you move out of the parent virtual environment directory, at which point the environment is deactivated.

Place this inside your .bashrc or .bash_profile.

function cd() {
  builtin cd "$@"

  if [[ -z "$VIRTUAL_ENV" ]] ; then
      # If config file is found -> activate the vitual environment
      venv_cfg_filepath=$(find . -maxdepth 2 -type f -name 'pyvenv.cfg' 2> /dev/null)
      if [[ -z "$venv_cfg_filepath" ]]; then
        return # no config file found
      fi

      venv_filepath=$(cut -d '/' -f -2 <<< ${venv_cfg_filepath})
      if [[ -d "$venv_filepath" ]] ; then
        source "${venv_filepath}"/bin/activate
      fi
  else
    # If the current directory is not contained 
    # within the venv parent directory -> deactivate the venv.
      cur_dir=$(pwd -P)
      venv_dir="$(dirname "$VIRTUAL_ENV")"
      if [[ "$cur_dir"/ != "$venv_dir"/* ]] ; then
        deactivate
      fi
  fi
}

Personally I think it's an improvement on a lot of the solutions here, since it should work for any virtual environment