Hermetic environments

[Eli the Bearded]

In comp.lang.python, DL Neil  <PythonList at DancesWithMice.info> wrote:
> Is Python going 'the right way' with virtual environments?
...
> Am I 'getting away with it', perhaps because my work-pattern doesn't 
> touch some 'gotcha' or show-stopper?
> 
> Why, if so much of 'the rest of the world' is utilising "containers", 
> both for mobility and for growth, is the Python eco-system following its 
> own path?

I'm going to speculate that even inside containers, some people will use
multiple virtual environments. It could be that the app and the
monitoring for that app are developed by different branches of the
company and have different requirements.

But I think a lot of the use of virtual environments is in dev
environments where a developer wants to have multiple closed settings
for doing work. On the dev branch, newer versions of things can be
tested, but a production environment can be retained for hotfixes to
deployed code.

Or because the different microservices being used are each at different
update levels and need their own environments.

> Is there something about dev (and ops) using Python venvs which is a 
> significant advantage over a language-independent (even better: an 
> OpSys-independent) container?

I'm not a big fan of language-dependent virtual environments because
they only capture the needs of a particular language. Very often code
works with things that are outside of that language, even if it is only
system libraries.

Elijah
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interested in hearing other voices on this