The following are the steps I take to setup up VirtualEnv and VirtualEnvWrapper on a new machine.

• Make sure pip is installed by running pip in the terminal.

• If it isn’t installed, install by doing

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sudo easy_install pip

• Next, install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper

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sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper

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sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper

• Open up your .bash_profile or .profile, and after your PATH statement, add the following

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    # set where virutal environments will live
    export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
    # ensure all new environments are isolated from the site-packages directory
    export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV_ARGS='--no-site-packages'
    # use the same directory for virtualenvs as virtualenvwrapper
    export PIP_VIRTUALENV_BASE=$WORKON_HOME
    # makes pip detect an active virtualenv and install to it
    export PIP_RESPECT_VIRTUALENV=true
    if [[ -r /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh ]]; then
        source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
    else
        echo "WARNING: Can't find virtualenvwrapper.sh"
    fi

• Open a new terminal window. You should see virtualenvwrapper.sh being run and setting up your .virtualenvs directory.

• Test creating a new virtualenv

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$ mkvirtualenv testenv

• You should see something in the console like

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New python executable in testenv/bin/python
Installing setuptools............done.
Installing pip...............done.
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /Users/kelsmj/.virtualenvsexport/testenv/bin/predeactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /Users/kelsmj/.virtualenvsexport/testenv/bin/postdeactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /Users/kelsmj/.virtualenvsexport/testenv/bin/preactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /Users/kelsmj/.virtualenvsexport/testenv/bin/postactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts creating /Users/kelsmj/.virtualenvsexport/testenv/bin/get_env_details

• That should put you into a new virtualenv called “testenv”

• Lets install some packages and create a requirements.txt file

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$ pip install rq
$ pip install requests
$ pip install google-api-python-client
$ pip freeze > requirements.txt

• Your have just installed 3 python packages into your virtual environment, and created a .txt file that will have all the necessary information in order to reproduce your environment.

• You can leave your virtualenv by doing

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deactivate testenv

• To create a new virtualenv, and install the libraries based on the requirements.txt file you just created, just do the following.

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mkvirtualenv testenv2
pip install -r requirements.txt

• List of commonly used commands
  • mkvirtualenv (create a new virtualenv)
  • rmvirtualenv (remove an existing virtualenv)
  • workon (change the current virtualenv)
  • add2virtualenv (add external packages in a .pth file to current virtualenv)
  • cdsitepackages (cd into the site-packages directory of current virtualenv)
  • cdvirtualenv (cd into the root of the current virtualenv)
  • deactivate (deactivate virtualenv, which calls several hooks)