Debugging With Existing Python Virtual Environment

[pinkmilk4]

I am having trouble programmatically creating a virtual environment which is external to the workspace and configuring the debugger to use it.

I am working in Windows and have written a bat script called 'venv.bat' that creates a new virtual environment in a folder outside of the current working directory and activates it such that running "python someFile.py" will use the venv interpreter and its dependencies. However, I want to be able to debug my python code and use the virtual environment's interpreter. I noticed that launch.json cannot evaluate the system environment variables my bat script sets.

Assume VIRTUAL_ENV=%USERPROFILE%\venv

In launch.json, I tried to access VIRTUAL_ENV to specify the python interpreter with the configuration below. However this does not work....
{
"name": "Python Debugger: Project1",
"type": "debugpy",
"request": "launch",
"program": "${workspaceFolder}/project1/test.py",
"python": "${env:VIRTUAL_ENV}\Scripts\python.exe",
"console": "integratedTerminal",
}

This configuration works but I had to set it manually and the absolute path may change
{
"name": "Python Debugger: Project1",
"type": "debugpy",
"request": "launch",
"program": "${workspaceFolder}/project1/test.py",
"python": "${userHome}\venv\Scripts\python.exe",
"console": "integratedTerminal",
}
Therefore ${userHome}\venv\Scripts\python.exe worked but ${env:VIRTUAL_ENV}\Scripts\python.exe did not and this is NOT ok because I only want to express the location of the virtual environment programmatically

I wrote this script for non-software engineers to set up a local python environment on their computes for running data analysis python scripts. They are not familiar with vscode IDE so I tried to create a solution for them as seamless as possible. Ideally they would run my bat script to activate the environment then can click "run and debug" to begin stepping through their python code. I want to avoid using the vscode way of creating the virtual environment because my bat script will take care of creating it, installing the packages, and activating it. The people I wrote this script for should not have to repeat these steps

What should I do? I don't have time to walk 10 engineers through how to use vscode and configure all these different settings manually. Why can't the extension just use the python that is active in the terminal shell? Please help!!!

[pinkmilk4]

https://github.com/pinkmilk4/batscriptcrazy/blob/main/python_venv/venv.bat

Here is the script I have been working on the automate the process ... just for reference

[karthiknadig]

Are you launching code from the terminal where the VIRTUAL_ENV is set?
In a terminal, run your scripts, but also add code ..

These would be the steps:

• Ask user to navigate to their project in a terminal
• create virtual environment
• activate and install packages
• Run code . to start VS Code from this terminal

This is what allows the IDE to see the environment variables needed for it to select the activated virtual environment automatically (without needing additional environment variables like env:VIRTUAL_ENV).

[pinkmilk4]

Hello, I run the bat script from the VSCode terminal shell so the IDE was already launched - and in the future, users will be using switching between virtual environments from the VSCode terminal

[pinkmilk4]

I solved my issue https://github.com/pinkmilk4/batscriptcrazy/tree/main/python_venv

[pinkmilk4]

Had to set the PYTHONPATH variable in my bat scripts so that when the default python interpreter in invoked, it knows to check the virtual environment for packages.

[pinkmilk4]

Thanks for the quick reply and idea to launch vs code directly from the bat script, I guess I expected the VSCode debugger to evaluate environment variables at runtime