Make your life easier with Virtualenvwrapper

When you do a lot of Python programming, you can make a mess of your system with Pip. Different apps need different requirements. One app needs version 1.2 of a package and another one needs 1.5. And then… you’re in trouble.

When you want to know what packages have been installed by Pip, use this:

$ pip freeze

The result can be a very long list.

For every project, whether it’s a simple application or a giant Django project, I create a new virtual environment with virtualenv. An easy way to do this is by using virtualenvwrapper.

Getting started with Virtualenv wrapper

$ sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper

There are some advanced settings which you can find in the manual.

When installed, let’s make a new environment called “testground”.

$ mkvirtualenv testground

If your virtualenvwrapper is working well, you should see something like this:

New python executable in testground/bin/python
Installing Setuptools.........done.
Installing Pip..............done.
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /home/yourname/.virtualenvs/testground/bin/predeactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /home/yourname/.virtualenvs/testground/bin/postdeactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /home/yourname/.virtualenvs/testground/bin/preactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /home/yourname/.virtualenvs/testground/bin/postactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /home/yourname/.virtualenvs/testground/bin/get_env_details

(testground)yourname@yoursystem:~$

Take a look at the last line, which now says (testground) before the prompt. Your virtual environment is there, and your are in it.

Now, do a pip freeze, it can result in something like this:

$ pip freeze
argparse==1.2.1
wsgiref==0.1.2

That list can be a lot shorter than the one outside the environment.

You can now install something that only effects this environment. Let’s try Pillow, version 2.2.2.

$ pip install Pillow==2.2.2

It will now try to install Pillow, when finished, do another pip fip freeze, and see if it’s installed

Switchting between virtualenvs

Let’s create another environment:

$ mkvirtualenv coolapp

...................done.
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /home/yourname/.virtualenvs/coolapp/bin/predeactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /home/yourname/.virtualenvs/coolapp/bin/postdeactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /home/yourname/.virtualenvs/coolapp/bin/preactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /home/yourname/.virtualenvs/coolapp/bin/postactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /home/yourname/.virtualenvs/coolapp/bin/get_env_details
(coolapp)yourname@yoursystem:~$

Now, let’s switch to fist the virtualenv we made by the magic word “workon”:

$ workon testground
(testground)yourname@yoursystem:~$

There you go, it’s as simple as that

No site packages

Like with vitualenv, you can tell virtualenvwapper not to use the systems sitepackages with –no-site-packages:

$ mkvirtualenv anotherenv --no-site-packages

Remove a virtual environment

It’s very easy to get rid of a virtual env by using rmvirtualenv:

$ rmvirtualenv coolapp

Removing coolapp...

List all virtualenvs

$lsvirtualenv

List your sitepackages

$ lssitepackages

#can result in this:
easy_install.py   Pillow-2.2.2-py2.7.egg-info  pkg_resources.pyc
easy_install.pyc  pip                          setuptools
_markerlib        pip-1.4.1-py2.7.egg-info     setuptools-0.9.8-py2.7.egg-info
PIL               pkg_resources.py