Python Setup

Python Programming

Introduction

Well, hello there! This is about setting up my system to support Python development, creating Python projects, and some important gotchas.

Software

Name	Type	How To Get	Purpose
poetry	Package Management	Website	The fedora version is old and missing some functionalities. Get the latest from their website.
pyenv	Version Management	Setup	Manage Python environments
PyCharm	IDE	JetBrains Toolbox	My IDE of choice

Installing other Python versions

The preferred way to get additional Python versions is using pyenv. Now, running pyenv install 3.X.X may fail because of missing libraries. See this to get all dependencies. Or run the following command.

sudo dnf install dnf-plugins-core
sudo dnf builddep python3

Poetry Setup

See this page on getting pyenv and poetry to work together. You'll need to set an experimental flag (and require a newer version of poetry).

Create a Python project

This assumes that you have a pre-existing empty project.

cd <pre-existing-project>
pyenv local 3.X.X
poetry init

... interactive mode ...

poetry install

The pyenv command gets poetry to use that copy of python and not the default system version. At this point you can open the project in PyCharm.

You may need to add the Python Interpreter that was created by poetry. It's located at ~/.cache/pypoetry/virtualenvs/<interpreter-name>/bin/python

PyCharm and Poetry

Some issues with PyCharm and Poetry playing nicely.

PyCharm seems to have a problem with poetry managing dependencies. It seems unable to update the virtual environment, so I'm managing packages directly using poetry.
To get PyTest to work, I needed to update the PyCharm settings in Settings -> Tools -> Python Integrated Tools -> Default Test Runner to use PyTest. It'll give a warning about no PyTest runner, but after restarting (and waiting) it'll find the PyTest tests and allow running them.

Libraries

These are some common libraries I've use a lot for development.

Name	Type	How To Get	Purpose
loguru	Logging	pip	Logging Framework
pytest	Test	pip	Testing Framework