Installed virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper: Python

Question

Lots of other threads about similar issues, but none that I could find where quite the same case as mine. So, here goes:

Things I did:

• Ran: sudo easy_install pip
• Ran: sudo pip install virtualenv
• Ran: sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper

Current State:

• .bash_profile

  export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
  export PIP_DOWNLOAD_CACHE=$HOME/.pip/cache
  export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
  export PIP_VIRTUALENV_BASE=$WORKON_HOME
  export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python
  

• Running mkvirtualenv test results in:

  New python executable in trunk/bin/python
  Installing setuptools, pip...done.
  /usr/bin/python: No module named virtualenvwrapper
  

• Manually inspecting '/usr/local/bin' shows that virtualenvwrapper.sh exists

• Unlike some other questions I saw about this, I get no message about virtualenvwrapper when I start a new terminal window
• Running 'which python' results in: /usr/bin/python

What I've tried:

• Inspecting my path to make sure it looks like it is supposed to
• Reinstalling pip, then using the reinstalled pip to reinstall virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper

Any help getting this working would be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

Got this error after recently (summer 2017) updating Homebrew and python. The issue in my case was that Homebrew no longer overwrites the system python and I didn't have virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper installed for the system python.

The solution in my case was to add the following to ~/.bash_profile (or ~/.zshrc):

export PATH="$(brew --prefix)/opt/python/libexec/bin:$PATH"

This made python point to the brew version of python and also gave me pip back. This version of python had virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper installed so the error no longer appeared. See the caveats section under brew info python and https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/issues/15746 for more information

Answer 2

I've managed to get this working after having the same problem you've described here by editing my ~/.bash_profile and adding this:

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/code/.virtualenvs
export PROJECT_HOME=$HOME/code
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/local/bin/python
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV=/usr/local/bin/virtualenv
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV_ARGS='--no-site-packages'

source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Save, close.

then:

$ source ~/.bash_profile

and:

$ mkvirtualenv test