Enhance release workflow by improving virtual environment setup and error handling. Ensure the environment is activated before installing dependencies and add a check for the existence of the virtual environment.

Author: randomradio

.github/workflows/_release.yml

@@ -136,14 +136,20 @@ jobs:
         # - attempt install again after 5 seconds if it fails because there is
         #   sometimes a delay in availability on test pypi
         run: |
+          set -euo pipefail
+
           uv venv
-          VIRTUAL_ENV=.venv uv pip install dist/*.whl
+          # Activate the environment so every subsequent command (including python)
+          # operates inside the freshly created venv that has the built wheel installed.
+          source .venv/bin/activate
+
+          uv pip install dist/*.whl
 
           # Replace all dashes in the package name with underscores,
           # since that's how Python imports packages with dashes in the name.
           IMPORT_NAME="$(echo "$PKG_NAME" | sed s/-/_/g)"
 
-          uv run python -c "import $IMPORT_NAME; print(dir($IMPORT_NAME))"
+          python -c "import $IMPORT_NAME; print(dir($IMPORT_NAME))"
 
       - name: Import test dependencies
         run: uv sync --group test
@@ -157,7 +163,14 @@ jobs:
           PKG_NAME: ${{ needs.build.outputs.pkg-name }}
           VERSION: ${{ needs.build.outputs.version }}
         run: |
-          VIRTUAL_ENV=.venv uv pip install dist/*.whl
+          set -euo pipefail
+
+          if [ ! -d ".venv" ]; then
+            uv venv
+          fi
+
+          source .venv/bin/activate
+          uv pip install dist/*.whl
 
       - name: Run unit tests
         run: make tests