complain about python on windows

Author: davidjxwu

content/blog/python_and_windows.md

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+---
+title: "Python on Windows: pyenv-win"
+date: "2025-01-29"
+tags: ["python", "rant"]
+---
+
+Man I hate using Python on Windows.
+
+For the longest time, I was using miniconda to manage my environment(s) on Windows. It was an easy, plug-and-play system, which was broadly supported.
+However, I had 2 problems:
+  - Somehow, IPython broke in the VS Code terminal for me. The IPython REPL would always freeze after typing import. No idea why, it works in a standalone terminal.
+  - Recently, I upgraded my Powershell from 7.4.something to 7.5.0, and something changed in how the conda script was activated, which caused the conda command to break in Powershell for me.
+
+So I uninstalled it.
+
+I had been thinking about uv for a while, but I really need a "global" environment, since I'm installing relatively large packages, like scipy, and I fragment my work into multiple projects, which makes redundant copies of libraries a particularly sore point for me.
+I know there is a caching system, and various workarounds, but they seem like a lot of effort for something that I'm not 1000% invested in (a lock file for dependencies).
+
+One thing I had seen at some point in the past was pyenv-win, a port of pyenv for Windows. I already use a pyenv + virtualenvwrapper setup on my non-Windows machine, so this was particularly appealing.
+Luckily, there is also a port of pyenv-venv (in the form of pyenv-win-venv) for Windows, which allows management of venvs in a "global" location.
+
+The installation was fast and pain-free, and full functionality only required a small change to the invocation script for pyenv-win-venv (that I'm going to PR soon).
+
+I finally have a working environment manager on Windows, along with a working VS Code IPython terminal.
+As a bonus, I don't have to deal with conda (at least until I have to do ML stuff...)