Virtualenv is a powerful tool used in Python programming to create isolated environments for different projects. This isolation allows developers to manage dependencies separately, ensuring that one project’s requirements do not interfere with another’s. It is particularly useful when different projects require different versions of the same package, helping to prevent conflicts and maintain a clean global site-packages directory ¹⁵.

To get started with virtualenv, you first need to install it, which can be done using pip or easy_install. Once installed, you can create a virtual environment by running a command like virtualenv FOLDER_NAME, where FOLDER_NAME is the name of the directory for your new environment. This command sets up a new folder containing a copy of the Python interpreter and a site-packages directory for your project-specific packages ²³.

Additionally, there are tools like virtualenvwrapper that simplify the management of multiple virtual environments, making it easier to create, delete, and switch between them ³.