Automatic virtual environment activation under WSL in python doesn't work

[maratnugmanov]

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes/No

• VS Code Version: 1.102.0
• OS Version: Windows 11 up to date

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open WSL bash console on Windows, navigate to your project
2. Activate venv, check "which python" or try running the project
3. All things should run okay, now open VS Code, same project
4. Check if your venv activated by VS Code. If not bottom right corner click python version and pick your venv
5. Try checking "which python" or running the project
6. It won't work, try "which python3" and it will show you it's the global one. But let's check if the manual activation works. Pick the global python in bottom right corner
7. Manually navigate to your project within the VS Code terminal
8. Activate venv, check "which python" or try running the project
9. It will work as expected.

At this point I'm not sure if this is WSL related though, but my setup is VS Code running on Windows 11 and working through WSL to get bash and Linux environment.

The output that follows is from automatically activated venv, as you can see uv works with it just fine.

(ticket_bot) maratnugmanov@Marat-NUC:~/code/ticket_bot$ uv sync
Resolved 48 packages in 13ms
Audited 46 packages in 0.07ms
(ticket_bot) maratnugmanov@Marat-NUC:~/code/ticket_bot$ uvicorn src.main:app --reload
Command 'uvicorn' not found, but can be installed with:
sudo apt install uvicorn
(ticket_bot) maratnugmanov@Marat-NUC:~/code/ticket_bot$

[maratnugmanov]

In the earlier versions the similar bug was there in a bit different form as you could've just deactivate/activate the venv selecting changing venv > global > venv in the bottom right corner but the trick is no longer working so right now the solution is to pick global in that same corner and just activate the stuff manually.

maratnugmanov@Marat-NUC:~/code/ticket_bot$ source .venv/bin/activate
(ticket_bot) maratnugmanov@Marat-NUC:~/code/ticket_bot$ uvicorn src.main:app --reload
INFO:     Will watch for changes in these directories: ['/home/maratnugmanov/code/ticket_bot']
INFO:     Uvicorn running on http://127.0.0.1:8000 (Press CTRL+C to quit)
INFO:     Started reloader process [2252] using WatchFiles

UPDATE: This global solution was not great as it breaks autocomplete and syntax highlighting. Turned to this one:

(ticket_bot) maratnugmanov@Marat-NUC:~/code/ticket_bot$ source .venv/bin/activate
(ticket_bot) (ticket_bot) maratnugmanov@Marat-NUC:~/code/ticket_bot$ uvicorn src.main:app --reload
INFO:     Will watch for changes in these directories: ['/home/maratnugmanov/code/ticket_bot']
INFO:     Uvicorn running on http://127.0.0.1:8000 (Press CTRL+C to quit)
INFO:     Started reloader process [10193] using WatchFiles

So it looks like it's not really activated by VS Code to start with, so deactivate doesn't work but activate works. So now I just activate it again even though it says (by adding prefix) it's already activated but it's not.

[sunbart]

Same issue, running 1.102.0 (cd0c47c0) on Win 11, connecting via Remote - SSH to a RHEL 9 machine. Python extension version 2025.10.0

[eleanorjboyd]

wondering if it is the same as this: #25275. See my comment in this thread on steps to identify / debug the problem

[sunbart]

Yes, seems to me to be a dupe of #25275. I'll reply more there.

[Windsage63]

It's not just in WSL. I'm running powershell in normal windows and it keeps breaking any time I change directories or projects. Sometimes it just breaks and I don't know why. AND It lies to you about it.
Here is the show environment contributions from a new terminal:

Activated environment for .\venv\Scripts\python.exe
PYTHON_BASIC_REPL=1
PATH=c:\Users\xxxx.vscode\extensions\ms-python.python-2025.10.0-win32-x64\python_files\deactivate\powershell;D:\PythonProjects\oldref\AISightStudio\venv\Scripts;${env:PATH}
VIRTUAL_ENV=D:\PythonProjects\oldref\AISightStudio\venv
VIRTUAL_ENV_PROMPT=venv

Then if you ask in the terminal you get this:

PS D:\PythonProjects\oldref\AISightStudio> python -c "import sys; print(sys.executable)"
C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\python.exe

I cannot tell you how many times in the last week this has caused me to install environments to global. AND you can't just manually activate, because all the new agents will open their own terminals and they trust the system and break things. What I would give the have the old (venv) tags back, to at least tell me when it's broken. The only fix I have found is to uninstall the python extension, reload, and reinstall the python extension.

[eleanorjboyd]

hm yes this looks related to a few issue reports we are getting- Im going to close this issue in favor of #25275 and move the discussion there and also here #25284 as I work to determine a solution. Thanks