Clarification on pipenv and virtualenv

[davidshq]

In the Virtual Environments document (dev/virtualenvs/) we start off by learning about pipenv but then move on to the lower level virtualenv. It is a little unclear under what circumstances we would be using virtualenv? I mean, I know it can practically be used, but for folks approaching Python for the first time it can be confusing.

I'm not suggesting the virtualenv section should go away, but maybe some additional clarification would be helpful. Something along the lines of:

"pipenv wraps a lower-level virtual environment utility - virtualenv. If you want to learn about using virtualenv, read on. Otherwise you can skip to the next chapter."

Where I personally really started getting confused is under Other Notes. Without scrolling back up the page it is not clear if this section is a part of the virtualenv discussion or if it is meant to be top-level and thus applicable to both pipenv and virtualenv.

Things become murkier when we start throwing additional utilities into the mix - as someone without experience with these utilities it seems to me that together they run somewhat parallel to pipenv.

Thanks for your hard work on this guide!

[mpoulin]

@dbader , @davidshq
It looks like this sections of the guide is an old version of the information at
https://pipenv.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Specifically,
https://pipenv.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install/

Should we link to that URL instead of trying to maintain a local copy here?

[davidshq]

At least until someone has the opp to rewrite the content with additional value beyond what is available in the pipenv documentation swapping out for a link makes sense.

What would be even better, though I don't know how to accomplish, would be auto pulling the install.rst file into the python-guide repo. This way one stays within the nav of Python Guide but still get the latest and greatest: https://github.com/pypa/pipenv/blob/master/docs/install.rst

[Marrin]

Maybe that question will be irrelevant when the pipenv project doesn't release a new version very soon. If not the question very well might become: should beginners be confronted with a tool that had its last release in 2018 and has unresponsive maintainers, even for people asking what they can do to help to get a new release out the door. Then in late 2019 there is a little hope in the line „The project is not dead; it has been held back by several subdependencies and a complicated release process.“ and the info that the next release „is actually almost finished“. Today, almost five months later — still no release.