Comprehensive beginner's virtualenv tutorial? [closed]

Answer 1

Virtualenv is a tool to create isolated Python environments.

Let's say you're working in 2 different projects, A and B. Project A is a web project and the team is using the following packages:

• Python 2.8.x
• Django 1.6.x

The project B is also a web project but your team is using:

• Python 2.7.x
• Django 1.4.x

The machine that you're working doesn't have any version of django, what should you do? Install django 1.4? django 1.6? If you install django 1.4 globally would be easy to point to django 1.6 to work in project A?

Virtualenv is your solution! You can create 2 different virtualenv's, one for project A and another for project B. Now, when you need to work in project A, just activate the virtualenv for project A, and vice-versa.

A better tip when using virtualenv is to install virtualenvwrapper to manage all the virtualenv's that you have, easily. It's a wrapper for creating, working, removing virtualenv's.

Answer 2

Here's another good one: http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2009/05/notes-using-pip-and-virtualenv-django/

This one shows how to use pip and a pip requirements file with virtualenv; Scobal's two suggested tutorials are both very helpful but are both easy_install-centric.

Note that none of these tutorials explain how to run a different version of Python within a virtualenv - for this, see this SO question: Use different Python version with virtualenv

Answer 3

For setting up virtualenv on a clean Ubuntu installation, I found this zookeeper tutorial to be the best - you can ignore the parts about zookeper itself. The virtualenvwrapper documentation offers similar content, but it's a bit scarce on telling you what exactly to put into your .bashrc file.

Answer 4

This is very good: http://simononsoftware.com/virtualenv-tutorial-part-2/

And this is a slightly more practical one: https://web.archive.org/web/20160404222648/https://iamzed.com/2009/05/07/a-primer-on-virtualenv/