Hatch vs virtualenv

Hatch is a free, MIT-licensed Python project manager for creating projects and managing development environments on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It can start projects from templates or initialize existing ones, including migrating setuptools configuration from setup.py. Environment management supports custom scripts and UV, with manual Python installations or automatic installation as part of an environment. Hatch also supports reproducible builds, test execution, and static analysis backed by Ruff. For publishing, it can upload packages to PyPI and other package indices; lockfiles, dependency groups, and private registries are listed capabilities. Its plugin system uses pluggy, with documented extension types for environments, builders, publishers, and other project tasks. Visual Studio Code can discover Hatch environments through the vscode-python extension, and an official GitHub Actions install action is documented. Installation options include standalone installers or binaries, pip, pipx, Homebrew, Conda, and other methods. The documentation provides a self-report command that prepares a GitHub issue for unexpected behavior.

virtualenv has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.