It’s all about scope.

Working environments is made even better by defining some variables that are only active in that specific environment.

Set Variables

navigate to $VIRTUAL_ENV/bin/postactivate

 export FIRST_NAME="Sam" export LAST_NAME="Gutentag"

Unset Variables

navigate to $VIRTUAL_ENV/bin/predeactivate

 unset FIRST_NAME unset LAST_NAME

Verify Variables are being Set and Unset correctly

In this example, use the command $ printenv | grep _NAME

  • Before activating the virtualenv, it should return no results
  • After activating the virtualenv, it should return our variables
  • After deactivating the virtualenv, it should return no results