Summary

This PR adds a new pipenv activate command that outputs the shell activation command, allowing users to activate the virtualenv in their current shell rather than spawning a subshell like pipenv shell does.

Motivation

This has been requested since 2018 (Issue #2086) with 20+ reactions. The current pipenv shell command spawns a nested subshell, which:

• Creates nested shell sessions
• Requires exit instead of deactivate to leave
• Can interfere with shell customizations

The new approach is similar to:

• Poetry's poetry env activate - Outputs a command to be eval'd
• virtualenvwrapper's workon - Activates in current shell

Usage

# Bash/Zsh
$ eval $(pipenv activate)
(venv) $

# Fish
$ eval (pipenv activate)

# PowerShell
PS> Invoke-Expression (pipenv activate)

Users can create a convenient shell alias:

alias penv='eval $(pipenv activate)'

Example Output

$ pipenv activate
source /home/user/.virtualenvs/project-wR0g04D-/bin/activate

$ pipenv activate --help
Usage: pipenv activate [OPTIONS]

  Outputs the shell command to activate the virtualenv.

  Unlike 'pipenv shell' which spawns a subshell, this command prints the
  activation command that can be evaluated in your current shell.

  Usage examples:
      $ eval $(pipenv activate)          # Bash/Zsh
      $ eval (pipenv activate)           # Fish
      $ Invoke-Expression (pipenv activate)  # PowerShell

  You can create a shell alias for convenience:
      alias penv='eval $(pipenv activate)'

  This approach is similar to Poetry's 'poetry env activate' command.

Technical Details

• Uses the existing _get_activate_script() function from shells.py
• Detects the current shell type (bash, zsh, fish, csh, powershell, nu) and outputs the appropriate activation command
• Outputs to stdout so it can be captured and eval'd

Fixes #2086

Pull Request opened by Augment Code with guidance from the PR author