mkvirtualenv: Too many levels of symbolic links

Question

I am running virtualenv burrito and getting an error that there are too many levels of symbolic links. I have no idea what that means.

mkvirtualenv --python          


        

Answer 1

I'm using a mac and I solved this by rm the virtual env that is named the same as you are trying to create. Specifically, I rm the folder within Users/user_name/.virtualenvs/. Then the create worked.

Answer 2

I'm not sure why but using

python3 -m venv venv

instead of

virtualenv -p python3 venv

and then activating the venv or setting the paths manually, something like this

      export PYTHONPATH=.:\$PYTHONPATH
      VIRTUAL_ENV=`pwd`/venv
      export VIRTUAL_ENV
      PATH="\$VIRTUAL_ENV/bin:\$PATH"
      export PATH

worked for me.

I tried to do some quick searching of the different between virtualenv and python3 -m venv module...but didn't find anything.