How to rename a virtualenv in Python?

Question

I misspelled the name of the virtualenv while initializing it using:

$ virtualenv vnev

I actually intended to create the environment with the name venv. Having tried to rename the vnev folder to venv, I find that this doesn't provide much help. The name of the activate environment still renames the old vnev.

$ mv vnev venv
$ . venv/bin/activate
(vnev) $ deactivate

I would like to know how to go about renaming the environment?

Pennyweight

Were you able to rename or recreate your virtualenv? – Hassle

@Hassle No. Atleast, not the way I wanted to. I wrote a script to install all the packages earlier installed in the wrong environment to the new environment. – Pennyweight

Does this answer your question? Can I move a virtualenv? – Artemisia

Answer 1

By default virtualenv does not support the renaming of environments. It is safer to just delete the virtualenv directory and create a new one with the correct name. You can do this by:

1. Activate your virtualenv: source vnev/bin/activate
2. Create a requirements.txt of currently installed packages: pip freeze > requirements.txt
3. Delete the misspelled virtualenv: rm -r vnev/
4. Create a new virtualenv with correct name: virtualenv venv
5. Activate new virtualenv: source venv/bin/activate
6. Install packages from requirements.txt: pip install -r requirements.txt

If recreating is not an option there are 3rd party tools like virtualenv-mv that might be helpful.

Alternatively you can use virtualenvwrapper which provides the cpvirtualenv command to copy or rename virtualenvs.

Hassle

Is it necessary to deactivate the old virtualenv before deleting it? I didn't and it still worked but just curious. Thanks. – Davina

@Davina I believe its best practice but not required. Here is the deactivate script for virtualenv: github.com/pypa/virtualenv/blob/master/virtualenv_embedded/… – Hassle

I liked the note on cpvirtualenv – Paez

Does this go for a virtual environment created with pyenv as well? – Hypozeugma

So importantly this does not actual move any changes to the virtual environment along, right? Say I change a functon in Scipy it will just install the clean Scipy? (That would defeat the purpose of the virtual envirnoment for me.) – Rhpositive

@Rhpositive did you ever find a way to actually moving instead of recreating the virtual environment? – Grind

@Grind No I did not. – Rhpositive

Answer 2

If you use virtualenvwrapper this can be done by:

$ cpvirtualenv <wrong_name> <correct_name>
$ rmvirtualenv <wrong_name>

Also, FYI, to rename a conda virtualenvironment, check out this question.

Kellsie

There seems to be a bug with cpvirutalenv, notably in ~/<your_env_dir>/<your_env>/bin/pip and pip3.x is hardcoding paths. And copy done via cpvirtualenv is not updating those. Easy to fix, but without it standard operations like pip freeze or uinstall won't work – Bambi

Answer 3

The steps I use to rename a virtual environment:

1. Copy the entire virtual environment folder to the new virtual environment.

cp -a old_venv new_venv

2. Use sed within the new_venv/bin folder to directly change references to old_v.env

cd new_venv/bin
# remove cache as sed would otherwise break with the `sed: couldn't edit __pycache__: not a regular file` error
rm -rf __pycache__/
sed -i 's/old_venv/new_venv/g' *

3. Remove the old virtual environment

rm -rf old_venv

Re-installing the ipykernel for jupyter may be required, but otherwise everything seems to work fine

Varicella

if you rename the folder containing your old_venv first, you only have to execute step2 – Quahog

i cannot use this in macOS 12.1. can help? – Normannormand

It works and is very usefull to fix a simple mv old_venv new_venv, but the sed substitution catch too much, and if the old_venv name happen to be in a bin script it produces unexpected results. The substitution should be limited to the shebang initial line. If there is also some problem with sys.path we should prefer virtualenv-clone – Overstate

Answer 4

In windows I was able to easily rename my virtual environment by editing activate.bat inside scripts\:

1. Backup the original activate.bat (I copy&pasted then renamed mine BACKUP_activate.bat).

2. Right-click and edit activate.bat.

3. Change VIRTUAL_ENV variable from:

   set VIRTUAL_ENV=C:\some_dir\old_venv_name
   

   into

   set VIRTUAL_ENV=C:\some_dir\new_venv_name
   

4. Change PROMPT variable from:

   set PROMPT=(old_venv_name) %PROMPT%
   

   into

   set PROMPT=(new_venv_name) %PROMPT%
   

5. Save the edited batch file

NOTE: My solution should work and save windows users setting up new virtual environments, I have no knowledge scripting or whatsoever in linux or other operating systems

Cannady

There is a little snag with this. The Scripts directory contains a number of .exe files that are placed there when you've created the virtual environment and when installing packages using pip. They have the old path of the virtual environment hard-coded in them. This includes, for instance, pip.exe. You have to modify these files using a hex editor (or use sed on WSL or MINGW). – Duckling

Answer 5

cpvirtualenv from virtualenv-wrapper errored out for me trying to run virtualenv-clone, but running that directly worked fine:

virtualenv-clone ~/.virtualenvs/oldname ~/.virtualenvs/newname
workon newname
rmvirtualenv oldname

No need to reinstall anything.

Modicum

Answer 6

My answer is similar to creating a new virtual environment with the dependencies of the old one, but this one is succinct.

1. Clone the old environment (say venv_1) to a new environment (say venv_2) using conda.

   conda create -n venv_2 --clone venv_1
   

This creates a new environment venv_2 cloning the venv_1. Hence no separate task of getting the packages/ dependencies. Single step suffices.

2. Delete the old virtual environment. [This step is optional if you still want to keep the old environment]

   rm -rf "fully qualified path of the old virtual environment"
   

So in 1/2 steps the task can be achieved.

Farron