Outline

• Our bug from yesterday: a Vim browser extension
• Python virtual environments (in VSCode)
• Setting up a launch configuration in VSCode
• Python packages, the Python package index, and pip
• Package dependencies at the project level, requirements.txt
• Preview: Git (with Git bash), SourceTree, and GitHub (remote repository host)

Our bug from yesterday: a Vim browser extension

• If anyone else uses Chrome Remote Desktop with Vimium active, you have been warned!

Python virtual environments (in VSCode)

• Virtual environments at a high level -- sandboxing project packages so that they don;t interfere with each other
• In VSCode specifically: https://jasonmurray.org/posts/2020/vscodepythonvenv/
• In the integrated terminal, run:
  • python -m venv .venv
  • And then ./.venv/Scripts/activate to activate the virtual environment

Setting up a launch configuration in VSCode

• https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/debugging#_set-configuration-options

Example:

{
    // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
    // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
    // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Preprocess",
            "type": "python",
            "request": "launch",
            "program": "main.py",
            "console": "integratedTerminal"
        }
    ]
}

Python packages, the Python package index, and pip

• https://pypi.org/
• https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_pip.asp
• pip is a package manager for Python, just like choco is a package manager for Windows.

Example:

• Let's say you want to build a URL from a file path. URLs don't have spaces (conventionally), and usually follow a specific format. To get strings in a format, we can download a package and use it: https://pypi.org/project/python-slugify/

Python packages, the Python package index, and pip

Let's say we had a simple program like the following

import slugify
def make_url(input_string):
  return slugify.slugify(input_string)

You can also just import the function directly (from slugify import slugify = in the format of from module_name import function_name), and then you don't need to worry about the module name when invoking the method.

Package dependencies at the project level, requirements.txt

• It's not as hard as you might think
• https://note.nkmk.me/en/python-pip-install-requirements/
  • First: pip freeze > requirements.txt
  • Then when installing your program somewhere else: pip install -r requirements.txt

Preview: Git (with Git bash), SourceTree, and GitHub (remote repository host)

• Git is a version control system. There are other options too, but Git is probably the most popular.
• Version control systems track the changes you make to files over time, and are absolutely essential to the software development process, especially when working on a team of developers.
• Today we will just be downloading and setting up a couple tools. We will get into specifics in our next lesson

Outline

• Our bug from yesterday: a Vim browser extension
• Python virtual environments (in VSCode)
• Setting up a launch configuration in VSCode
• Python packages, the Python package index, and pip
• Package dependencies at the project level, requirements.txt
• Preview: Git (with Git bash), SourceTree, and GitHub (remote repository host)