The way to activate a virtual environment in a docker container is to export modified PATH and possibly change PYTHONHOME.

I think my ultimate problem with venv is that virtual environments are solved by Docker. Sure sure, full time Python devs need a way to manage multiple Python and package versions on their machine and that’s fine. But whatever they need has to not get in my way when I come in to do DevOps stuff. If my project needs a specific version of Node, I don’t need nvm or n, I just install the version I want in my Dockerfile. Same with Go, same with most languages I use.

Python sticks out for having the arrogance to think that it’s special, that “if you’re using Python you don’t need Docker, we already solved that problem with venv and conda”. And like, that’s cute and all, but I frequently need to package Python code and code in another language into one environment, and the fact that their choice for “containerizing” things (venv/conda) plays rudely with every other language’s choice (Docker) is really annoying.

Then use a Docker container that has the right Python version already? There are official containers for that.

If that's not good enough for you, you could do some devops stuff and build a docker container in which you compile Python.

I don't see where it is different from some npm project. You just need to use the available resources correctly.

I dont understand why you can't just install python in your container? How does venv make it hard?