virtual environments for isolation

Sandbox individual project dependencies to prevent version conflicts across a single operating system.

Developers use tools like Python’s venv or Ruby’s rbenv to create discrete directories for project-specific binaries and libraries. This prevents dependency hell where Project A requires NumPy 1.21 while Project B demands 1.26. By isolating site-packages and environment variables, these tools ensure that a global update to a system library does not break local production code. It is a lightweight alternative to full containerization (Docker) that maintains speed and simplicity for local development workflows.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html