#445: Auto-activate Python virtual environments for any project

Topics covered in this episode:

• pyx - optimized backend for uv
• * Litestar is worth a look*
• * Django remake migrations*
• * django-chronos*
• Extras
• Joke

About the show

Python Bytes 445

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Michael #1: pyx - optimized backend for uv

• via John Hagen (thanks again)
• I’ll be interviewing Charlie in 9 days on Talk Python → Sign up (get notified) of the livestream here.
• Not a PyPI replacement, more of a middleware layer to make it better, faster, stronger.
• pyx is a paid service, with maybe a free option eventually.

Brian #2: Litestar is worth a look

• James Bennett
• Michael brought up Litestar in episode 444 when talking about rewriting TalkPython in Quart
• James brings up
  • scaling - Litestar is easy to split an app into multiple files
  • Not using pydantic - You can use pydantic with Litestar, but you don’t have to. Maybe attrs is right for you instead.
• Michael brought up
  • Litestar seems like a “more batteries included” option.
  • Somewhere between FastAPI and Django.

Brian #3: Django remake migrations

• Suggested by Bruno Alla on BlueSky
• In response to a migrations topic last week
• django-remake-migrations is a tool to help you with migrations and the docs do a great job of describing the problem way better than I did last week
• “The built-in squashmigrations command is great, but it only work on a single app at a time, which means that you need to run it for each app in your project. On a project with enough cross-apps dependencies, it can be tricky to run.”
• “This command aims at solving this problem, by recreating all the migration files in the whole project, from scratch, and mark them as applied by using the replaces attribute.”
• Also of note
  • The package was created with Copier
  • Michael brought up Copier in 2021 in episode 219
  • It has a nice comparison table with CookieCutter and Yoeman
  • One difference from CookieCutter is yml vs json.
  • I’m actually not a huge fan of handwriting either. But I guess I’d rather hand write yml.
  • So I’m thinking of trying Copier with my future project template needs.

Michael #4: django-chronos

• Django middleware that shows you how fast your pages load, right in your browser.
• Displays request timing and query counts for your views and middleware.
• Times middleware, view, and total per request (CPU and DB).

Extras

Brian:

• Test & Code 238: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
  • after 10 years, this is the goodbye episode

Michael:

• Auto-activate Python virtual environment for any project with a venv directory in your shell (macOS/Linux): See gist.
• Python 3.13.6 is out.
• Open weight OpenAI models
• Just Enough Python for Data Scientists Course
• The State of Python 2025 article by Michael

Joke: python is better than java