pip installing in global site-packages instead of virtualenv

Question

Using pip3 to install a package in a virtualenv causes the package to be installed in the global site-packages folder instead of the one in the virtualenv folder  Here s how I set up Python3 and virtualenv on OS X Mavericks  10 9 1    I installed Python3 using Homebrew   ruby -e    curl -fsSL https   raw github com Homebrew homebrew go install   brew install python3 --with-brewed-openssl   Changed the  PATH variable in  bash profile  added the following line   export PATH  usr local bin  PATH   Running which python3 returns  usr local bin python3  after restarting the shell    Note  which python3 still returns  usr bin python though   Installed virtualenv using pip3   pip3 install virtualenv   Next  create a new virtualenv and activate it   virtualenv testpy3 -p python3 cd testpy3 source bin activate   Note  if I don t specify -p python3  pip will be missing from the bin folder in the virtualenv   Running which pip and which pip3 both return the virtualenv folder    Users kristof VirtualEnvs testpy3 bin pip3   Now  when I try to install e g  Markdown using pip in the activated virtualenv  pip will install in the global site-packages folder instead of the site-packages folder of the virtualenv   pip install markdown   Running pip list returns   Markdown  2 3 1  pip  1 4 1  setuptools  2 0 1  virtualenv  1 11    Contents of  Users kristof VirtualEnvs testpy3 lib python3 3 site-packages     pycache     markerlib  easy install py pip  pip-1 5 dist-info  pkg resources py setuptools  setuptools-2 0 2 dist-info    Contents of  usr local lib python3 3 site-packages   Markdown-2 3 1-py3 3 egg-info    pycache    easy-install pth markdown  pip-1 4 1-py3 3 egg  setuptools-2 0 1-py3 3 egg setuptools pth virtualenv-1 11-py3 3 egg-info  virtualenv py virtualenv support    As you can see  the global site-packages folder contains Markdown  the virtualenv folder doesn t   Note  I had Python2 and Python3 installed before on a different VM  followed these instructions  and had the same issue with Python3  installing packages in a Python2 based virtualenv worked flawlessly though   Any tips  hints      would be very much appreciated

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It s also worth checking that you didn t modify somehow the path to your virtualenv    In that case the first line in bin pip  and the rest of the executables  would have an incorrect path   You can either edit these files and fix the path or remove and install again the virtualenv

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Short answer is run Command virtualenv with parameter       no-site-packages      Long answer with explanation  -  So after running here and there  and going through lot of threads i found my self the problem  Above answers have given the idea but I would like to go again over everything though    The problem is even if you   re activating the environment it   s referring to the system environment because of the way we have crated the virtualenv  when we run the command virtualenv env -p python3  it will install the virtualenv but it will not create no-global   site-packages txt  Because of that when you activate the environment by source activate command there this file called site py  name can be different  i just forgot   which runs and checks if this file is not present it will not add your env path to sys path and use systems python  to fix this issue just run virtualenv with extra parameter    no-site-packages it will create that file and when you activate the environment it will add your custom environment path in your PATH variable making it accessible

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I had the same issue on macos with python 2 and 3 installed    Also  I had aliases to point to python3 and pip3 in my  bash profile   alias python  usr local bin python3 alias pip  usr local bin pip3   Removing aliases and recreating virtual env using python3 -m venv venv fixed the issue

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I had this problem  It turned out there was a space in one of my folder names that caused the problem  I removed the space  deleted and reinstantiated using venv  and all was well

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I had this problem  and after trying all the above solution I just removed everything and started afresh   In my own case i used sudo in creating one of the folders in which the virtual environment existed  and sudo give the priviledges to root  I was very pissed  But it worked

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The first thing to check is which location pip is resolving to   which pip   if you are in a virtualenv you would expect this to give you something like       path to virtualenv  name of virtualenv bin pip   However it may be the case that it s resolving to your system pip for some reason  For example you may see this from within your virtualenv  this is bad        usr local bin pip    or anything that isn t in your virtualenv path     To solve this check your pipconfig in      pipconf    conf pip  etc pip conf   and make sure that there is nothing that is coercing your Python path or your pip path  this fixed it for me    Then try starting a new terminal and rebuild your virtualenv  delete then create it again

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Lot of good discussion above  but virtualenv examples were used  Since  conda  is now the recommended  tool to manage virtualenv  I have summarized the steps in running pip in conda env as follow    I ll use py36r as the name of the env  and  opt conda envs is the prefix to the envs      source  opt conda etc profile d conda sh   skip if already done    conda activate py36r   pip  install pkg xyz   pip  list   grep pkg xyz   Note that the pip executed should be in  opt conda envs py36r bin pip  not  opt conda bin pip    Alternatively  you can simply run the following without conda activate     opt conda envs py36r bin pip   Also  if you install using conda  you can install without activate     conda install -n py36r pkg abc

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I had this problem too  Calling sudo pip install caused Python packages to be installed in the global site-packages diretory and calling pip install just worked fine  So no use sudo in virtualenv

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It happened to me when I installed virtualenv with --python python3 6 flag but afterwards tried to use pip2 install  Creating virtualenv with flag of the version that you ll use solves permission problems  To check  try which pip or which pip2 or which pip3  depends on your choice   If any pip you use shows path not to venv here is your problem

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Funny you brought this up  I just had the exact same problem  I solved it eventually  but I m still unsure as to what caused it   Try checking your bin pip and bin activate scripts  In bin pip  look at the shebang  Is it correct  If not  correct it  Then on line  42 in your bin activate  check to see if your virtualenv path is right  It ll look something like this  VIRTUAL ENV   Users me path to virtual environment    If it s wrong  correct it  deactivate  then   bin activate  and if our mutual problem had the same cause  it should work  If it still doesn t  you re on the right track  anyway  I went through the same problem solving routine as you did  which piping over and over  following the stack trace  etc   Make absolutely sure that   Users kristof VirtualEnvs testpy3 bin pip3   is what you want  and not referring to another similarly-named test project  I had that problem  and have no idea how it started  My suspicion is running multiple virtualenvs at the same time    If none of this works  a temporary solution may be to  as Joe Holloway said      Just run the virtualenv s pip with its full path  i e  don t rely on searching the executable path  and you don t even need to activate the environment  It will do the right thing    Perhaps not ideal  but it ought to work in a pinch   Link to my original question   VirtualEnv Pip trying to install packages globally

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I had this problem too   Calling pip install  lt package name gt  from the  bin directory within my Python 3 3 virtual environment on my Mavericks Mac caused the Python package to be installed in the Python 2 7 global site packages directory   This was despite the fact that my  PATH started with the directory containing pip   Weird  This doesn t happen on CentOS   For me  the solution was calling pip3 instead of pip   When I had installed pip within the virtual environment via ez setup  three  pip  executables had been installed in the  bin directory - pip  pip3  and pip3 3  Curiously  all three files were exactly the same   Calling pip3 install  lt package name gt  caused the Python package to be installed correctly into the local site-packages directory   Calling pip with the full pathname into the virtual environment also worked correctly   I d be interested to know why my Mac isn t using  PATH the way I would expect it to

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I had a similar problem after updating to pip  8 0 0  Had to resort to debugging pip to trace out the bad path   As it turns out my profile directory had a distutils configuration file with some empty path values  This was causing all packages to be installed to the same root directory instead of the appropriate virtual environment  in my case  lib site-packages    I m unsure how the config file got there or how it had empty values but it started after updating pip   In case anyone else stumbles upon this same problem  simply deleting the file    pydistutils cfg  or removing the empty config path  fixed the problem in my environment because pip went back to the default distributed configuration

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The same problem  Python3 5 and pip 8 0 2 installed from Linux rpm s   I did not find a primary cause and cannot give a proper answer  It looks like there are multiple possible causes   However  I hope I can help with sharing my observation and a workaround    pyvenv with --system-site-packages     bin does not contain pip  pip is available from system site packages packages are installed globally  BUG    pyvenv without --system-site-packages   pip gets installed into   bin  but it s a different version  from ensurepip  packages are installed within the virtual environment  OK     Obvious workaround for pyvenv with --system-site-packages    create it without the --system-site-packages option change include-system-site-packages   false to true in pyvenv cfg file

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I had the same problem  I solved it by removing venv directory and recreating it   deactivate  if venv is activated first deactivate it  rm -rf venv virtualenv -p python3 venv   ENV bin activate pip3 install -r requirements txt   Now everything works like a charm

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I had exactly the problem from the title  and I solved it  Pip started to install in the venv site-packages after I cleaned my PATH  it had a path to my local   bin directory at the very beginning    So  my advice  thoroughly check your environment variables for  garbage  or any non-standard things  Unfortunately  virtualenv can be sensitive to those   Good luck

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I have to use  sudo  for installing packages through pip on my ubuntu system for some reason  This is causing the packages to be installed in global site-packages  Putting this here for anyone who might face this issue in future

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For Python 3ers  Try updating  I had this exact same problem and tried Chases  answer  however no success  The quickest way to refactor this is to update your Python Minor   Patch version if possible  I noticed that I was running 3 5 1 and updated to 3 5 2  Pyvenv once again works

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Go to bin directory in your virtual environment and write like this     pip3 install  lt package-name gt

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I hit into the same issue while installing a python package from within a virtualenv  The root cause in my case was different  From within the virtualenv  I was  out of habit on Ubuntu   doing   sudo easy install -Z  lt package gt    This caused the bin pip shebang to be ignored and it used the root s non virtualenv python to install it in the global site-packages  Since we have a virtual environment  we should install the package without  sudo

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For me this was not a pip or virtualenv problem  It was a python problem  I had set my  PYTHONPATH manually in    bash profile  or    bashrc  after following some tutorial online  This manually set  PYTHONPATH was available in the virtualenv as it probably should be allowed   Additionally add2virtualenv was not adding my project path to my  PYTHONPATH for some reason within the virtualenv   Just some forking paths for those who might still be stuck  Cheers

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Had this issue after installing Divio  it had changed my PATH or environment in some way  as it launches a terminal     The solution in this case was just to do source    bash profile which should already be setup to get you back to your original pyenv pyenv-virtualenv state

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Came across the same issue today  I simply reinstalled pip globally with sudo easy install pip  OSX  Max   then created my virtualenv again with sudo virtualenv nameOfVEnv  Then after activating the new virtualenv the pip command worked as expected   I don t think I used sudo on the first virtualenv creation and that may have been the reason for not having access to pip from within the virtualenv  I was able to get access to pip2 before this fix though which was odd

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None of the above solutions worked for me    My venv was active   pip -V and which pip gave me the correct virtualenv path  but when I pip install-ed packages with activated venv  my pip freeze stayed empty    All the environment variables were correct too   Finally  I just changed pip and removed virtualenv   easy install pip  7 0 2  pip install pip  10  sudo pip uninstall virtualenv   Reinstall venv   sudo pip install virtualenv   Create venv   python -m virtualenv venv name here   And all packages installed correctly into my venv again

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I stumbled upon the same problem running Manjaro  I created the virtual environment using python3 -m ven venv and then activated using source venv bin actiave  which python and which pip both pointed towards the correct binaries in the virtualenv  however I was not able to install to the virtualenv  even when using the full path of the binaries  Turned out that when I uninstalled the python-pip package with sudo pacman -R python-pip python-reportlab  had to include reportlab to satisfy dependencies  everything started to work as expected  Not sure why  but this is probably due to a double install where the system package is taking precedence

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Here are some practices that could avoid headaches when using Virtual Environments    Create a folder for your projects  Create your Virtualenv projects inside of this folder   After activating the environment of your project  never use  sudo pip install package   After finishing your work  always  deactivate  your environment  Avoid renaming your project folder       For a better representation of this practices  here is a simulation     creating a folder for your projects environments    mkdir venv   creating environment    cd venv      virtualenv google drive New python executable in google drive bin python Installing setuptools  pip   done    activating environment    source google drive bin activate   installing packages   google drive    pip install PyDrive Downloading unpacking PyDrive Downloading PyDrive-1 3 1-py2-none-any whl                 Successfully installed PyDrive PyYAML google-api-python-client oauth2client six uritemplate httplib2 pyasn1 rsa pyasn1-modules Cleaning up      package available inside the environment   google drive    python Python 2 7 6  default  Oct 26 2016  20 30 19    GCC 4 8 4  on linux2 Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  import pydrive auth  gt  gt  gt     gt  gt  gt  gdrive   pydrive auth GoogleAuth    gt  gt  gt    deactivate environment   google drive    deactivate        package NOT AVAILABLE outside the environment   google drive    python Python 2 7 6  default  Oct 26 2016  20 32 10    GCC 4 8 4  on linux2 Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  import pydrive auth Traceback  most recent call last   File   lt stdin gt    line 1  in  lt module gt  ImportError  No module named pydrive auth  gt  gt  gt       Notes   Why not sudo       Virtualenv creates a whole new environment for you  defining  PATH and some other variables and settings  When you use sudo pip install package  you are running Virtualenv as root  escaping the whole environment which was created  and then  installing  the package on global site-packages  and not inside the project folder where you have a Virtual Environment  although you have activated the environment    If you rename the folder of your project  as mentioned in the accepted answer            you ll have to adjust some variables from some files inside the bin directory of your project       For example       bin pip  line 1  She Bang       bin activate  line 42  VIRTUAL ENV

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This problem occurs when create a virtualenv instance and then change the parent folder name

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After creating virtual environment  try to use pip located in yourVirtualEnvName Scripts  It should install a package inside Lib site-packages in your virtual environment

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WINDOWS For me solution was not to use mkvirtualenv  but  python -m venv path to your virtualenv workon works correctly  while in virtualenv  pip -V shows virtualenv s path to pip

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I had a similar problem on Windows  It was caused by renaming folder structures in my project within a virtualenv folder name  The paths in files didn t change but stayed as they were when virtual env was created  As Chase Ries mentioned I ve changed the paths to VIRTUAL ENV and python exe in files    venv Scripts activate bat  set  quot VIRTUAL ENV path to venv venv quot  11 line in file   venv Scripts Activate ps1    env VIRTUAL ENV  quot path to venv venv quot  30 line in file   venv Scripts pip exe    d  path to env venv scripts python exe this line is at the end of a file  in my case moved to the right in 667 line  I am working on disc d so at the begining of the path is the letter of it   venv Scripts pip3 7 exe    d  path to env venv scripts python exe this line is at the end of a file  in my case moved to the right in 667 line   venv Scripts pip3 exe    d  path to env venv scripts python exe this line is at the end of a file  in my case moved to the right in 667 line

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I also encountered this problem  it troubled me for a long time  until I solved it according to  Chase Ries method  The key to solving the problem is   Try checking your bin pip and bin activate scripts  In bin pip  look at the shebang  Is it correct  If not  correct it  Then on line  42 in your bin activate  check to see if your virtualenv path is right  It ll look something like this VIRTUAL ENV  quot  Users me path to virtual environment quot   If it s wrong  correct it  deactivate  then   bin activate  and if our mutual problem had the same cause  it should work   Below  I will explain this process in detail in the Ubuntu environment  the same is true for Windows and MacOS  The meaning of this sentence is that we need to check whether the first line    path python of the bin pip file in the virtual environment is correct  As originally shown in my file     home banni dai  venv bin python3 Run pip in terminal absolute path    home banni dai  venv bin pip Will find an error  bash    pip   home banni dai  venv bin python3  bad interpreter  No such file or directory Now I am confused why I can t find this python3  because python3 exists in the folder  venv bin where the virtual environment is located  I check the absolute path of the folder  venv bin  After executing the pwd command  it displays   home banni Research dai  venv bin Carefully observe that the path of the  venv folder has changed  Change the first line of the  bin pip file to    home banni Research dai  venv bin python3 In the same way  check and modify the bin activate file  I changed VIRTUAL ENV  quot  home banni dai  venv quot  to VIRTUAL ENV  quot  home banni Research dai  venv quot  At this point  after activating the virtual environment  the pip command can be executed normally  So  for me  the reason for this problem is that the path of the folder where the virtual environment is located has changed  a secret problem that was left when the folders were organized before   However  due to the change in the location of the folder where the virtual environment is located  there may be many path errors  so the easiest way is to restore the folder where the virtual environment is located to the original location

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This happened to me when I created the virtualenv in the wrong location  I then thought I could move the dir to another location without it mattering  It mattered   mkdir   projects virtualenv myenv cd myenv git clone  my repository    Oh crap  I forgot to cd into projects before creating the virtualenv and cloning the rep  Oh well  I m too lazy to destroy and recreate  I ll just move the dir with no issues   cd   mv myenv projects cd projects myenv myrepo pip install -r requirements   Nope  wants more permissions  what the  I thought it was strange but SUDO AWAY  It then installed the packages into a global location   The lesson I learned was  just delete the virtualenv dir  Don t move it

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Somehow a setup cfg file with a prefix    in the project folder  running pip install on the virtualenv outside the project folder worked so from the inside it was telling pip to use an empty prefix  which defaults to      removing the file fixed it

[python] pip installing in global site-packages instead of virtualenv

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