[TheRealPomax]

Good job, you spotted the exact problem: that's what they were originally for, and that makes no sense in 2023 (or 2020, or the day venv functionality was added into main line Python) where literally everything a venv does is trivially achieved in a new location if it didn't hardcode everything relating to paths.

There is literally nothing about a venv that somehow magically makes it impossible to still work after relocation. Breaking the venv on relocation was a conscious choice that has been insisted on to this day for no good reason other than "a long history of not bothering to fix this nonsense is all the justification we need to continue not fixing this nonsense".

[nodemaker]

Jeez just clone a venv with venv cloning tools

[TheRealPomax]

You mean `python -m venv`? Because that's literally that with just as little effort, and then you copy requirements.txt, but the whole point is that in 2023, this should not be necessary and the continued insistence by both python and specifically venv maintainers that it somehow needs to be this way, is insane. And telling people that they should just use clone tools is equally insane when we could just...

...you know...

...fix virtual environments?

[nodemaker]

No there is a whole python module for cloning venvs.

[9dev]

Which serves to highlight the insanity of it all? How is having a separate module for that not even worse than, as OP suggested - fixing virtual environments?