Managing Python virtual environments sounds simple — until your projects grow, your dependencies tangle, and suddenly you’re knee-deep in broken builds and lost environments.

Venvutil started as a small set of Bash scripts to make managing virtual environments a little less painful. It has since evolved into a powerful toolkit that handles everything from creating, activating, and cloning environments to logging every change and enabling full environment rollbacks — all without leaving your shell.

Why It Matters

Pip and Conda both do great work, but they leave gaps:

  • There’s no easy way to snapshot your environment before changes.
  • Cloning environments isn’t seamless, especially when switching Python versions.
  • Tracking environment changes over time is tedious — and recovery after a mistake can be painful.

Venvutil closes those gaps.

It wraps around pip and conda, providing a unified set of tools that:

  • Create, activate, and clone environments effortlessly.
  • Freeze and diff environments with a single command (vdiff).
  • Log every potentially destructive operation automatically.
  • Roll back environments to a previous state in seconds.

Built for Developers

Whether you’re experimenting with LLMs, fine-tuning performance builds (like optimized NumPy), or just managing a growing set of projects, venvutil keeps your environments organized, reproducible, and auditable.

  • Works seamlessly on macOS and Linux.
  • Optimized for Apple Silicon workflows.
  • Lightweight — pure Bash and standard tooling, no external dependencies needed beyond Conda and Python.

Coming Soon: Migration Magic

A Python version migration tool is on the roadmap:

  • Duplicate an entire environment onto a new Python version.
  • Keep your packages intact.
  • Roll back easily if something breaks.

Get Involved

If you want better control over your Python environments — and fewer late-night debugging marathons — check out the project on GitHub:

Built by unixwzrd — making virtual environment management a little more sane, one shell command at a time.