Python development, debugging, automation, and server-side data processing guides.
VS Code lets you pass environment variables to a debug session from .vscode/launch.json. This is useful when a Python app needs settings like an API base URL, feature flag, database name, or development mode value while you are debugging locally. The simplest option is the env object inside a debug configuration. Each key becomes an … Read full guide: How Do I Add Environment Variables to launch.json in VSCode?
When a Python program behaves differently in VS Code than it does in your terminal, the working directory is often the reason. Relative paths such as data/input.csv, settings.json, or ./logs/app.log are resolved from the current working directory, not necessarily from the file you are debugging. In VS Code, the Python debugger reads its launch settings … Read full guide: VSCode: How to Set Working Directory for Debugging a Python Program
Matplotlib is often used on laptops and desktop machines where a graphical display is available. On a server, cron job, Docker container, CI worker, or SSH-only environment, that assumption can break. If Matplotlib tries to use an interactive backend that expects an X server, your script may fail with display-related errors instead of producing a … Read full guide: Generating Matplotlib Graphs Without a Running X Server
When you run a Python script from the terminal, most normal output goes to stdout, while warnings and errors usually go to stderr. Keeping those streams separate is useful, but sometimes you want to temporarily capture both of them: maybe you are testing a noisy function, saving diagnostic output to a file, or wrapping a … Read full guide: Temporarily Redirect stdout and stderr in Python
