Where should virtualenvs be created?

Question

I'm confused as to where I should put my virtualenvs.

With my first django project, I created the project with the command

django-admin.py startproject djangoproject

I then cd'd into the djangoproject directory and ran the command

virtualenv env

which created the virtual environment directory at the same level as the inner djangoproject directory.

Is this the wrong place in which to create the virtualenv for this particular project?

I'm getting the impression that most people keep all their virtualenvs together in an entirely different directory, e.g. ~/virtualenvs, and then use virtualenvwrapper to switch back and forth between them.

Is there a correct way to do this?

Answer 1

If you use pyenv install Python, then pyenv-virtualenv will be a best practice. If set .python-version file, it can auto activate or deactivate virtual env when you change work folder. Pyenv-virtualenv also put all virtual env into $HOME/.pyenv/versions folder.

Answer 2

Changing the location of the virtualenv directory breaks it

This is a major advantage of putting the directory outside of the repository tree, e.g. under ~/.virtualenvs with virutalenvwrapper.

Otherwise, if you keep it in the project tree, moving the project location will break the virtualenv.

See: Renaming a virtualenv folder without breaking it

There is --relocatable but it is known to not be perfect.

Another minor advantage: you don't have to .gitignore it.

If it weren't for that, I'd just leave my virtualenvs gitignored in the project tree itself to keep related stuff close together.

This is fine since you you will likely never reuse a given virtualenv across projects.

Answer 3

The generally accepted place to put them is the same place that the default installation of virtualenvwrapper puts them: ~/.virtualenvs

Related: virtualenvwrapper is an excellent tool that provides shorthands for the common virtualenv commands. http://www.doughellmann.com/projects/virtualenvwrapper/

Answer 4

Many people use the virtualenvwrapper tool, which keeps all virtualenvs in the same place (the ~/.virtualenvs directory) and allows shortcuts for creating and keeping them there. For example, you might do:

mkvirtualenv djangoproject

and then later:

workon djangoproject

It's probably a bad idea to keep the virtualenv directory in the project itself, since you don't want to distribute it (it might be specific to your computer or operating system). Instead, keep a requirements.txt file using pip:

pip freeze > requirements.txt

and distribute that. This will allow others using your project to reinstall all the same requirements into their virtualenv with:

pip install -r requirements.txt