> source ./venv/bin/activate To this day I'm not quite sure why the venv developers decided that sourcing was a good idea; all it does can be effectively repla

> source ./venv/bin/activate To this day I'm not quite sure why the venv developers decided that sourcing was a good idea; all it does can be effectively replaced with #!/bin/sh export VIRTUAL_ENV="path to venv" export PATH="$VIRTUAL_ENV/bin:$PATH" unset PYTHONHOME exec "$SHELL" Just run this script to get into an "activated" shell. To deactivate, just press Ctrl+D. If you're really fancy, you can replace the last line with exec "${@:-$SHELL}" to run a command directly in the activated environment (and then deactivate it immediately).