Dev Setup

Development Environment Setup

Procedure

1. Create and activate a virtual environment

# Windows
python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate

# Linux/macOS
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

2. Install dependencies

# Runtime + dev + eval dependencies
pip install -r dev_requirements.txt

# Runtime only
pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Create the .env file

Create a .env file in the project root with:

ENVIRONMENT_NAME="staging"

All other settings (Cosmos DB, Search, Key Vault, etc.) are resolved from App Configuration at runtime.

4. Grant Azure RBAC permissions

avc ops grant

This grants your identity the required roles:

• App Configuration Data Reader on avc-appconfig-staging
• Search Index Data Reader on Azure AI Search
• Cosmos DB Contributor on avc-cosmos-staging
• Key Vault access on avc-vault-staging
• Cognitive Services OpenAI User on azsdk-engsys-openai
• Azure AI User on azsdk-engsys-ai

Pass --assignee-id <ID> to grant to a specific user instead of yourself.

5. Verify the setup

# Run unit tests
pytest tests

# Generate a review (needs a test API view file in scratch/apiviews/<lang>/)
avc review generate -l python -t scratch/apiviews/python/test.txt

# Health check the deployed service
avc ops check

Gotchas

• Always activate the venv before running any commands (avc, pytest, pylint, etc.)
• avc not found? Use .\avc on Windows PowerShell, or ensure the project root is in your PATH
• ModuleNotFoundError: prompty — You're running outside the venv. Activate it first.
• Azure auth errors — Run az login first, then avc ops grant to set up RBAC
• Staging vs production — The .env defaults to staging. To use production, swap to the production App Config endpoint and set ENVIRONMENT_NAME="production"