POETRY_VIRTUALENVS_IN_PROJECT being ignored or am I doing something wrong?

[mkvlrn-cm42]

According to docs, setting the POETRY_VIRTUALENVS_IN_PROJECT environment variable to a true value forces poetry to create .venv directory inside the project.

I have set that variable to 1 and true and it was ignored both times when creating a new project (poetry new my-project) and then activating the shell (poetry shell inside the created directory), it just creates the virtualenv in the cache directory: ~/.cache/pypoetry/virtualenvs/my-project-HASH-py3.12.

It works fine when I create a poetry.toml file with the correct setting there.

What could be the problem here?

Python: 3.12.3
Poetry: 1.8.3
env being set in my .zshrc file and present/valid when running poetry commands

[dimbleby]

it works fine, you must be doing something wrong

~/foo$ poetry config virtualenvs.in-project
null

~/foo$ POETRY_VIRTUALENVS_IN_PROJECT=true poetry install
Creating virtualenv foo in /home/dch/foo/.venv
...

[mkvlrn-cm42]

when setting the value the way you did it works:

but relying on the variable set by .zshrc still won't do it properly, even though it is set correctly:

I guess I'll just create an alias to set the var when using poetry, but I was wondering if there's something wonky with using env vars set elsewhere

[rafalkrupinski]

try

export POETRY_VIRTUALENVS_IN_PROJECT=true

[clintonroy]

How are you setting it? Please always show code. My guess is you're setting it (for the current process, the shell) but not exporting it (for the subprocess, poetry).

[kimbasn]

I faced the same behavior as @mkvlrn. Even when I exported the variable, Poetry ignored it and created the virtual environment in the cache directory.

I finally set config variable virtualenvs.in to true and it works as expected.

poetry config virtualenvs.in-project true

Any new project has its virtual environment inside the project directory.