Matplotlib doesn't display graph in virtualenv

Question

I have pip installed matplotlib in my virtualenv and I am trying to plot a simple graph. I use Eclipse and PyDev. When I run the script from Eclipse it doesn\'t display any grap

Answer 1

If you have a version of matplotlib installed on your system version of python, then you can link to the system version of matplotlib. On my machine I did the following:

cd $VIRTUAL_ENV/lib/python2.7/site-packages
ln -s /usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/matplotlib .
ln -s /usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/matplotlib-1.1.1rc .

This avoids many of the problems with getting matplotlib to work in the virtualenv but limits you to using the system version of matplotlib (which on this machine is not too bad).

This method also allows you to use the --no-site-packages, but still have matplotlib work for you.