What s the proper way to install pip virtualenv and distribute for Python

Question

Short Question  What is the proper way to install pip  virtualenv  and distribute   Background In my answer to SO question 4314376  I recommended using ez setup so that you could then install pip and virtualenv as follows  curl -O http   peak telecommunity com dist ez setup py sudo python ez setup py sudo easy install pip sudo pip install virtualenv  I originally pulled these instructions from Jesse Noller s blog post So you want to use Python on the Mac   I like the idea of keeping a clean global site-packages directory  so the only other packages I install there are  virtualenvwrapper and distribute   I recently added distribute to my toolbox because of this Python public service announcement  To install these two packages  I used  sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper curl -O http   python-distribute org distribute setup py sudo python distribute setup py  No more setuptools and easy install To really follow that Python public service announcement  on a fresh Python install  I would do the following  curl -O http   python-distribute org distribute setup py sudo python distribute setup py sudo easy install pip sudo pip install virtualenv sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper  Glyph s Rebuke In a comment to my answer to SO question 4314376  SO user Glyph stated   NO  NEVER EVER do sudo python setup py install whatever  Write a    pydistutils cfg that puts your pip installation into    local or something  Especially files named ez setup py tend to suck down newer versions of things like setuptools and easy install  which can potentially break other things on your operating system   Back to the short question So Glyph s response leads me to my original question   What is the proper way to install pip  virtualenv  and distribute

User · Answer

You can do this without installing anything into python itself   You don t need sudo or any privileges   You don t need to edit any files   Install virtualenv into a bootstrap virtual environment  Use the that virtual environment to create more  Since virtualenv ships with pip and distribute  you get everything from one install    Download virtualenv    http   pypi python org pypi virtualenv https   pypi python org packages source v virtualenv virtualenv-12 0 7 tar gz  or whatever is the latest version    Unpack the source tarball Use the unpacked tarball to create a clean virtual environment  This virtual environment will be used to  bootstrap  others  All of your virtual environments will automatically contain pip and distribute  Using pip  install virtualenv into that bootstrap environment  Use that bootstrap environment to create more    Here is an example in bash     Select current version of virtualenv  VERSION 12 0 7   Name your first  bootstrap  environment  INITIAL ENV bootstrap   Set to whatever python interpreter you want for your first environment  PYTHON   which python  URL BASE https   pypi python org packages source v virtualenv    --- Real work starts here --- curl -O  URL BASE virtualenv- VERSION tar gz tar xzf virtualenv- VERSION tar gz   Create the first  bootstrap  environment   PYTHON virtualenv- VERSION virtualenv py  INITIAL ENV   Don t need this anymore  rm -rf virtualenv- VERSION   Install virtualenv into the environment   INITIAL ENV bin pip install virtualenv- VERSION tar gz   Now you can use your  bootstrap  environment to create more     Create a second environment from the first   INITIAL ENV bin virtualenv py-env1   Create more   INITIAL ENV bin virtualenv py-env2   Go nuts   Note  This assumes you are not using a really old version of virtualenv  Old versions required the flags --no-site-packges  and depending on the version of Python  --distribute   Now you can create your bootstrap environment with just python virtualenv py path-to-bootstrap or python3 virtualenv py path-to-bootstrap

User · Answer

Here is a nice way to install virtualenvwrapper update of this   Download virtualenv-1 11 4  you can find latest at here   Unzip it   open terminal   Create a bootstrapenv and activate it    cd     python  lt path to unzipped folder gt  virtualenv py bootstrapenv   source bootstrapenv bin activate    Install virtualenvwrapper    pip install virtualenvwrapper   mkdir -p   bootstrapenv Envs    append it to file   bashrc    vi    bashrc   source   bootstrapenv bin activate   export WORKON HOME   bootstrapenv Envs   source   bootstrapenv bin virtualenvwrapper sh    run it now    source    bashrc  That is it  now you can use mkvirtualenv env1  lsvirtualenv   etc Note  you can delete virtualenv-1 11 4 and virtualenv-1 11 4 zip from Downloads folders

User · Answer

I made this procedure for us to use at work    cd   curl -s https   pypi python org packages source p pip pip-1 3 1 tar gz   tar xvz cd pip-1 3 1 python setup py install --user cd   rm -rf pip-1 3 1   HOME  local bin pip install --user --upgrade pip distribute virtualenvwrapper    Might want these three in your  bashrc export PATH  PATH  HOME  local bin export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER VIRTUALENV ARGS  --distribute  source  HOME  local bin virtualenvwrapper sh  mkvirtualenv mypy workon mypy pip install --upgrade distribute pip install pudb   Or whatever other nice package you might want    Key points for the security minded    curl does ssl validation  wget doesn t  Starting from pip 1 3 1  pip also does ssl validation  Fewer users can upload the pypi tarball than a github tarball

User · Answer

You can do this without installing anything into python itself  You don t need sudo or any privileges  You don t need to find the latest version of a virtualenv tar file You don t need to edit version info in a bash script to keep things up-to-date  You don t need curl wget or tar installed  nor pip or easy install this works for 2 7 as well as for 3 X   Save the following to  tmp initvenv py   from future import print function  import os  sys  shutil  tempfile  subprocess  tarfile  hashlib  try      from urllib2 import urlopen except ImportError      from urllib request import urlopen  tmp dir   tempfile mkdtemp prefix  initvenv    try        read the latest version from PyPI     f   urlopen  https   pypi python org pypi virtualenv          retrieve the  tar gz file     tar found   False     url   None     sha256   None     for line in f read   splitlines            if isinstance line  bytes               line   line decode  utf-8           if tar found              if  sha256  in line                  sha256   line split  data-clipboard-text   1  split      1                  break             continue         if not tar found and  tar gz  gt   not in line              continue         tar found   True         for url in line split                   if url startswith  https                    break     else          print  tar gz not found           sys exit 1      file name   url rsplit      1  1      print file name      os chdir tmp dir      data   urlopen url  read       data sha256   hashlib sha256 data  hexdigest       if sha256    data sha256          print  sha256 not correct           print sha256          print data sha256          sys exit 1      with open file name   wb   as fp          fp write data      tar   tarfile open file name      tar extractall       tar close       os chdir file name replace   tar gz            print subprocess check output  sys executable   virtualenv py                                        sys argv 1    decode  utf-8    end         if len sys argv   gt  2          print subprocess check output               os path join sys argv 1    bin    pip     install    virtualenv                  sys argv 2    decode  utf-8    end     except      raise finally      shutil rmtree tmp dir     always clean up   and use it as  python binary to use in venv  tmp initvenv py your venv name  optional packages    e g   if you really need the distribute compatibility layer for setuptools   python  tmp initvenv py venv distribute   Please note that  with older python versions  this might give you InsecurePlatformWarnings      Once you have your virtualenv  name e g  venv  you can setup another virtualenv by using the virtualenv just installed   venv bin virtualenv venv2   virtualenvwrapper  I recommend taking a look at virtualenvwrapper as well  after a one time setup      opt python 2 7 10 bin python  tmp initvenv py venv virtualenvwrapper   and activation  can be done from your login script      source venv bin virtualenvwrapper sh   you can do things like     mktmpenv  New python executable in tmp-17bdc3054a46b2b bin python Installing setuptools  pip  wheel   done  This is a temporary environment  It will be deleted when you run  deactivate    tmp-17bdc3054a46b2b           I have not found a way to suppress the warning  It could be solved in pip and or request  but the developers point to each other as the cause  I got the  often non-realistic  recommendation to upgrade the python version I was using to the latest version  I am sure this would break e g my Linux Mint 17 install  Fortunately pip caches packages  so the Warning is made only once per package install

User · Answer

Python 3 4 onward  Python 3 3 adds the venv module  and Python 3 4 adds the ensurepip module   This makes bootstrapping pip as easy as      python -m ensurepip   Perhaps preceded by a call to venv to do so inside a virtual environment   Guaranteed pip is described in PEP 453

User · Answer

There is no problem to do sudo python setup py install  if you re sure it s what you want to do   The difference is that it will use the site-packages directory of your OS as a destination for  py files to be copied   so  if you want pip to be accessible os wide  that s probably the way to go  I do not say that others way are bad  but this is probably fair enough

User · Answer

I ve had various problems  see below  installing upgraded SSL modules  even inside a virtualenv   on top of older OS-provided Python versions  so I now use pyenv  pyenv makes it very easy to install new Python versions and supports virtualenvs   Getting started is much easier than the recipes for virtualenv listed in other answers   On Mac  type brew install pyenv and on Linux  use pyenv-installer this gets you built-in virtualenv support as well as Python version switching  if required  works well with Python 2 or 3  can have many versions installed at once  This works very well to insulate the  quot new Python quot  version and virtualenv from system Python   Because you can easily use a more recent Python  post 2 7 9   the SSL modules are already upgraded  and of course like any modern virtualenv setup you are insulated from the system Python modules  A couple of nice tutorials   Using pyenv and virtualenv - when selecting a Python version  it s easier to use pyenv global 3 6 1  global to current user  or pyenv local 2 7 13  local to current directory   pyenv basics and use with virtualenv  The pyenv-virtualenv plugin is now built in - type pyenv commands   grep virtualenv to check   I wouldn t use the pyenv-virtualenvwrapper plugin to start with - see how you get on with pyenv-virtualenv which is more integrated into pyenv  as this covers most of what virtualenvwrapper does  pyenv is modelled on rbenv  a good tool for Ruby version switching  and its only dependency is bash   pyenv is unrelated to the very similarly named pyvenv - that is a virtualenv equivalent that s part of recent Python 3 versions  and doesn t handle Python version switching  Caveats Two warnings about pyenv   It only works from a bash or similar shell - or more specifically  the pyenv-virtualenv plugin doesn t like dash  which is  bin sh on Ubuntu or Debian  It must be run from an interactive login shell  e g  bash --login using a terminal   which is not always easy to achieve with automation tools such as Ansible   Hence pyenv is best for interactive use  and less good for scripting servers  Older distributions - SSL module problems One reason to use pyenv was that there were often problems with upgrading Python SSL modules when using older system-provided Python versions   This may be less of a problem now that current Linux distributions support Python 3 x

User · Answer

There are good instructions on the Virtualenv official site  https   pypi python org pypi virtualenv   Basically what I did  is install pip with sudo easy install pip  then used sudo pip install virtualenv then created an environment with  virtualenv my env  name it what you want   following that I did  virtualenv --distribute my env  which installed distribute and pip in my virtualenv    Again  follow the instruction on the virtualenv page   Kind of a hassle  coming from Ruby  P

User · Answer

I came across the same problem recently   I   m becoming more partial to the    always use a virtualenv    mindset  so my problem was to install virtualenv with pip without installing distribute to my global or user site-packages directory   To do this  I manually downloaded distribute  pip and virtualenv  and for each one I ran    python setup py install --prefix    local python-private     with a temporary setting of PYTHONPATH    local python-private  so that setup scripts were able to find distribute    I   ve moved the virtualenv script to another directory I have on my PATH and edited it so that the distribute and virtualenv modules can be found on sys path   Tada  I did not install anything to  usr   usr local or my user site-packages dir  but I can run virtualenv anywhere  and in that virtualenv I get pip

User · Answer

If you follow the steps advised in several tutorials I linked in this answer  you can get the desired effect without the somewhat complicated  manual  steps in Walker s and Vinay s answers  If you re on Ubuntu   sudo apt-get install python-pip python-dev   The equivalent is achieved in OS X by using homebrew to install python  more details here    brew install python   With pip installed  you can use it to get the remaining packages  you can omit sudo in OS X  as you re using your local python installation    sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper    these are the only packages you need installed globally and I doubt that it will clash with anything system-level from the OS  If you want to be super-safe  you can keep the distro s versions sudo apt-get install virtualenvwrapper   Note  in Ubuntu 14 04 I receive some errors with pip install  so I use pip3 install virtualenv virtualenvwrapper and add VIRTUALENVWRAPPER PYTHON  usr bin python3 to my  bashrc  zshrc file   You then append to your  bashrc file  export WORKON HOME source  usr local bin virtualenvwrapper sh   and source it       bashrc   This is basically it  Now the only decision is whether you want to create a virtualenv to include system-level packages  mkvirtualenv --system-site-packages foo   where your existing system packages don t have to be reinstalled  they are symlinked to the system interpreter s versions  Note  you can still install new packages and upgrade existing included-from-system packages without sudo - I tested it and it works without any disruptions of the system interpreter   kermit hocus-pocus    sudo apt-get install python-pandas kermit hocus-pocus    mkvirtualenv --system-site-packages s  s kermit hocus-pocus    pip install --upgrade pandas  s kermit hocus-pocus    python -c  import pandas  print pandas   version     0 10 1  s kermit hocus-pocus    deactivate kermit hocus-pocus    python -c  import pandas  print pandas   version     0 8 0   The alternative  if you want a completely separated environment  is  mkvirtualenv --no-site-packages bar   or given that this is the default option  simply  mkvirtualenv bar   The result is that you have a new virtualenv where you can freely and sudolessly install your favourite packages  pip install flask

User · Answer

The good news is if you have installed python3 4  pyvenv is already been installed  So  Just  pyvenv project dir source project dir bin activate python --version    python 3 4     Now in this virtual env  you can use pip to install modules for this project   Leave this virtual env   just  deactivate

User · Answer

I think Glyph means do something like this    Create a directory    local  if it doesn t already exist  In your    bashrc  ensure that    local bin is on PATH and that    local is on PYTHONPATH  Create a file    pydistutils cfg which contains    install  prefix    local   It s a standard ConfigParser-format file  Download distribute setup py and run python distribute setup py  no sudo   If it complains about a non-existing site-packages directory  create it manually   mkdir -p    local lib python2 7 site-packages  Run which easy install to verify that it s coming from    local bin Run pip install virtualenv Run pip install virtualenvwrapper Create a virtual env containing folder  say    virtualenvs In    bashrc add  export WORKON HOME source    local bin virtualenvwrapper sh    That s it  no use of sudo at all and your Python environment is in    local  completely separate from the OS s Python  Disclaimer  Not sure how compatible virtualenvwrapper is in this scenario - I couldn t test it on my system  -

User · Answer

Update  As of July 2013 this project is no longer maintained  The author suggests using pyenv   pyenv does not have built-in support for virtualenv  but plays nice with it    Pythonbrew is a version manager for python and comes with support for virtualenv   After installing pythonbrew and a python-version using venvs is really easy     Initializes the virtualenv  pythonbrew venv init    Create a virtual sandboxed environment  pythonbrew venv create mycoolbundle      Use it  pythonbrew venv use mycoolbundle

User · Answer

On Ubuntu   sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv  The package python-pip is a dependency  so it will be installed as well

User · Answer

Install ActivePython  It includes pip  virtualenv and Distribute

[python] What's the proper way to install pip, virtualenv, and distribute for Python?

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