poetry install vs poetry env use

[doolio]

Both these commands can create a virtual environment with the latter also activating it immediately. I notice poetry env use also creates a envs.toml file in {cache-dir}/virtualenvs. Curious why poetry install does not or why it is not necessary?

[neersighted]

These commands do radically different things:

• poetry install creates the Poetry-managed environment if it doesn't already exist, and then installs the project + its dependencies inside
• poetry env use set the Python used for the Poetry-managed environment, creating it if it doesn't already exist. envs.toml is created to record what the 'current interpreter' for the environment is (as the user has explicitly selected one, instead of letting Poetry select the interpreter implicitly)