Sync Pipfile changes with virtualenv

After modifiying Pipfile/Pipfile.lock (i.e. after a git checkout) I would expect that there is a simple command, that syncs the changes back to the virtual environment. Ideally it is done automaticially when running pipenv shell/pipenv run. At least I would expect pipenv check to warn if Pipfile does not matcb to the environment any more.

But neither did I find a command to sync the files with environment manually nor did run/shell sync them automaticially nor did check return errors.

What I did was:

• pipenv install <packagename>==<version1>
• save Pipfile (i.e. by git commit)
• pipenv install <packagename>==<version2>
• restore Pipfile (i.e. by git checkout)
• run any pipenv command => commands are done within an environment that has <version2> installed

[mrh1997]

One of the nice things of pipenv is, that every commit has its own virtualenv spec (in Pipfile.lock). My understanding is, that when I checkout a commit pipenv will guarantee that I work with exactly the same virtualenv I worked when I checked out this commit the last time (similarly to git, which guarantees that I work with exactly same codebase).

pipenv update is not appropriate for this, as it does not create a virtualenv as described in ‘Pipfile.lock’, but it does exactly the opposite: it creates a ‘Pipfile.lock’ from a virtualenv (after upgrading the virtualenv to the newest packages).

In the meantime I found a operation which does exactly what I want:

pipenv install --ignore-pipfile

But this as far from intuitive.

Furthermore: pipenv shell or pipenv run guarantees that you have a virtualenv when being run the first time. Why does it not ensure this on every run (=check if the virtualenv is different from Pipfile.lock and restore it if not so)?

[mimischi]

I’m not sure whether it’s clear what you’re exactly trying to do. Your “What I did” example is not very clear.

Were you trying to do this?

git checkout -b newbranch
pipenv install mynewpackage
git commit -am 'Added `mynewpackage` to environment'
git checkout master

Although you now have your old Pipfile (pre-installation of mynewpackage in the branch newbranch), that package is still installed in your current environment. You want to get rid of that, right?

Just use pipenv update. This will compare your environment against your Pipfile, purge all packages and reinstall everything.