[New-bugs-announce] [issue35644] venv doesn't do what it claims to do (apears not to work at all?)

[Ray Donnelly]

New submission from Ray Donnelly <rdonnelly at anaconda.com>:

Happy New Year!

I'm not sure if this is a misunderstanding on my part, a docs bug or a code bug.

At https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html we see:

"The solution for this problem is to create a virtual environment, a self-contained directory tree that contains a Python installation for a particular version of Python, plus a number of additional packages"

and

"This will create the tutorial-env directory if it doesn’t exist, and also create directories inside it containing a copy of the Python interpreter, the standard library, and various supporting files."

However, when testing with https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.2/python-3.7.2-amd64.exe I see no Python interpreter (nor DLL) in my venv directory:

```
python.exe -m venv %TEMP%\venv
%TEMP%\venv\Scripts\activate.bat
dir %TEMP%\venv
```

gives:

```
 Directory of C:\Users\RDONNE~1\AppData\Local\Temp\venv

02/01/2019  19:38    <DIR>          .
02/01/2019  19:38    <DIR>          ..
02/01/2019  19:38    <DIR>          Include
02/01/2019  19:38    <DIR>          Lib
02/01/2019  19:38               121 pyvenv.cfg
02/01/2019  19:38    <DIR>          Scripts
               1 File(s)            121 bytes
               5 Dir(s)  912,281,780,224 bytes free
```

pyvenv.cfg contains:

```
home = C:\Users\rdonnelly\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37
include-system-site-packages = false
version = 3.7.2
```

Further to this, after activating, I do not see the `venv` directory in `sys.path`:

```
python -c "import sys; print(sys.path)"
['',
 'C:\\Users\\rdonnelly\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Python\\Python37\\python37.zip',
 'C:\\Users\\rdonnelly\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Python\\Python37\\DLLs',
 'C:\\Users\\rdonnelly\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Python\\Python37\\lib',
 'C:\\Users\\rdonnelly\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Python\\Python37',
 'C:\\Users\\rdonnelly\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Python\\Python37\\lib\\site-packages']
```

>From past experience, the old `virtualenv` project would copy the interpreter and DLL across.

Any help here would be appreciated!

----------
components: Windows
messages: 332892
nosy: Ray Donnelly, paul.moore, steve.dower, tim.golden, zach.ware
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: venv doesn't do what it claims to do (apears not to work at all?)
type: behavior
versions: Python 3.7

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue35644>
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