FreeCAD venv environment

freecad_venv.sh

# If you want to develop for FreeCAD in an environment that is aware of all the baked-in imports, simply do this!

FreeCAD...AppImage --appimage-extract  # create squashfs-root/ dir

# create venv using appimage's python
squashfs-root/usr/bin/python -m venv .env

# Add this to `.env/bin/activate`
export FREECAD_ROOT=<SQUASHFS_LOCATION>/usr
export PYTHONPATH=$FREECAD_ROOT/lib:$FREECAD_ROOT/lib/python3.11/site-packages:$FREECAD_ROOT/lib/python3.11:$FREECAD_ROOT/Mod:$PYTHONPATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$FREECAD_ROOT/lib:$FREECAD_ROOT/lib64:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

# start your env
source .env/bin/activate

# run your editor
# run a python interpreter
# imports work! (import FreeCAD, import Part, import CAM, etc)

With this, you can import FreeCAD, load FCStd files, run the interpreter, install whatever libs you want, etc and use it all from within your own editor/terminal.