Unexpected Python interpreter when running "west espressif monitor"

[jyc-biz]

Hello all,

I am using an ESP32-C3-DevkitM-1 as the target hardware and Windows as the operating system. When I run "west espressif monitor", I got a ModuleNotFoundError telling me that serial is not available.
The python file that throws this error is zephyrproject\modules\hal\espressif\tools\idf_monitor\idf_monitor.py.

Steps I took:

1. Followed along the Zephyr Getting Started Guide until the "Build the Blinky Sample" section, since this sample is not supported in ESP32-C3.
2. Followed along the ESP32-C3 guide to try to build Hello World instead. Sample was built and flashed successfully, but "west espressif monitor" generated the error above.

That said, using a separate terminal at this point, I was able to see the following printout, indicating that the device is running the sample without issues:
*** Booting Zephyr OS build v3.7.0-507-gfc7560126592 ***
Hello World! esp32c3_devkitm/esp32c3

To poke around further, I decided to try printing out sys.executable in idf_monitor.py, which returns "C:\Users\myUser\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\python.exe". If I understand this correctly, since I have the Python virtual environment activated, the string should have been something like "pathToZephyrproject\virtualEnvFolder\Scripts\python.exe" right? By the way this is indeed the case if I create and run a dummy script in the zephyr subfolder.

I think I might have misunderstood something here. Any pointers are greatly appreciated!

[jyc-biz]

Update: the issue went away after reinstalling Python + re-initializing Zephyr. I noticed that several pip packages that west uses are already available globally. My guess is that when "west espressif monitor" runs, some functions end up using the global packages and causing issues as a result. By making sure that west and the relevant pip packages only get installed in the virtual environment, running the same command allows me to see the hello world printout.