pyenv

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

45048 stars · 3266 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

pyenv is a pure-shell tool for managing and switching between multiple Python versions on a per-user and per-project basis. It uses PATH shims rather than requiring Python itself, and pairs with pyenv-virtualenv for virtual environment management.

Use cases

• switch between multiple python versions
• set a per-project python version
• install a specific python version without system package manager
• test code against several python versions with tox
• manage virtualenvs per project

When to choose

• you need multiple Python versions side by side on Linux or macOS
• you want per-project Python version pinning via a .python-version file
• you prefer a lightweight tool that doesn't depend on Python itself

When to avoid

• you only ever need one Python version
• you want full environment and dependency management in one tool (consider uv or conda)
• you primarily work on Windows without WSL

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

developer-tools cli package-manager developer-tools programming-languages cli cross-platform python-version-management version-switcher shell-tool pyenv-virtualenv command-line linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="pyenv/pyenv")