system wide installation, multiple python versions

[david-vicente]

If I have installed pylsp with

python -m pip install "python-lsp-server[all]"

using the system wide python interpreter (lets say version 3.10) that comes with my Linux distribution, but I want to use pylsp while editing a script for another python version (e.g. 3.11, installed using pyenv), is there a way to inform pylsp of this?

For example using pyright if I add

[tool.pyright]
pythonVersion = "3.11"

to pyproject.toml at the root of the project, pyright adapts accordingly, even though I also installed it using my system wide python running

python -m pip install pyright

(I know that installing pyright through pip installs node in the background though...)

[doolio]

Are you saying that even after specifiying a pyenv installed python as the active version pylsp still relies on your system version?

FWIW, I use asdf a language agnostic tool version manager to install python (it uses pyenv under the hood for python). With it I can set the active python at the system or local (read project) level. I then create a virtual environment based on the active python and install pylsp into the virtual environment.

[david-vicente]

When I opened the discussion my goal was to have pylsp installed globally and have it discover virtual environments and adapt to them. For example I wanted to install pylsp in my python3.10's global environment, and use that installation to edit projects that could be for example in python versions 3.9, 3.10 or 3.11. I didn't want to install pylsp in every virtual environment that I have.

After reading the documentations of pylsp's dependencies I found out that:

• jedi allows me to achieve my goal, if I configure pylsp.plugins.jedi.environment from my client.
• flake8 (which is a wrapper for pycodestyle, maccabe and pyflakes) does not allow me to achieve the goal because it has to be installed in the virtual environment of a python whose version is the same of the project that I'm editing. In other words, flake 8 does not care about virtual environments, but it does care about python versions.
• pylint does not allow me to achieve the goal because it has to be installed in the virtual environment of the project in order to use its full capabilities.
• rope I still haven't checked.

[david-vicente]

With pyright you can have a single pyright installed globally and if you use with direnv it will find the current active virtual environment and python version.

[david-vicente]

I can do the same with pylsp provided that I only enable jedi.

[doolio]

Interesting. Thanks for sharing your findings.

[david-vicente]

It seems that Rope also needs to be installed in each project's environment. See this discussion.