virtualenvwrapper commands aren't working

Question

tow-81-235:Projects pessimisticoptimism$ mkvirtualenv development
-bash: mkvirtualenv: command not found
tow-81-235:Projects pessimisticoptimism$ sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper
Password:
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): virtualenvwrapper in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): virtualenv in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from virtualenvwrapper)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): virtualenv-clone in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from virtualenvwrapper)
Cleaning up...
tow-81-235:Projects pessimisticoptimism$ mkvirtualenv development
-bash: mkvirtualenv: command not found

Why am I getting this error? I have virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper installed. I'd like to use mkvirtualenv and workon. I find it odd that virtualenv is working, but virtualenvwrapper isn't.

Hawserlaid

Answer 1

1st, ensure you're installing with sudo:

sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper

2nd, append the following lines to your .bashrc file (with nano ~/.bashrc):

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

3rd, reload your profile

source ~/.bashrc

Pushy

Worked for me..! thnx – Mitchiner

After i close my teminal. When i open again the workon command doesn't work.. it occurs 'command not found' is there any way to be permanent active? so i can to do 'source .venvs/app/bin/activate' every time i open my terminal ?? – Starla

Hi @ePascoal, the lines in the .bashrc are supposed to make it the changes permanent. Every time you launch a terminal it reads the current user's .bashrc (assuming you are using bash as your shell). You should be able to add workon app under the 3rd line (`source ...) in your .bashrc to make it automatically activate each time. – Pushy

MAC USERS - Use .bash_profile instead of .bashrc like Will's answer suggests. – Turman

To make it permanent, make sure you are adding the two lines (export... and source...) to your ~/.bahrc file, and not only copying and pasting the commands in the terminal! – Tremml

seems this issue is very common. Why don't authors of virtualenv fix it for permanent? – Ruano

Hi @KishorPawar, virtualenvwrapper is a standard shell script. The reason for adding it to .bashrc is so that it can create the virtual environment mappings (i.e. mkvirtualenv) every time you open the terminal without having to call the script yourself every time. – Pushy

That is what my question is, why can't these lines be added to .bashrc during installation only? – Ruano

Answer 2

Summary

I'm on a Mac and my answer is similar to @Ramces answer except it was with bash_profile. I just want to elaborate a little further for Mac users to be aware that there's a lot of different profiles including:

• .bashrc
• .bash_profile
• .profile

Some files like .profile do not take precedence over .bash_profile (if it exists) and will then be ignored. If you successfully do the below steps and get a virtual env working, but then close out your terminal and 'workon command not found', then you need to setup for the correct profile. For a detailed answer, see here

Install Steps:

1. sudo pip install virtualenv

   Installs virtualenv (allows you to separate your envrionments)

2. sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper

   Installs virtualenvwrapper (allows you to use the 'workon' command)

3. nano ~/.bash_profile

   export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
   source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
   

4. source ~/.bash_profile

   Reloads the profile. Going forward you only need step 5 (to create new environments) and step 6 (to run environments)

5. mkvirtualenv my_env

   This creates your virtual environment (this example is with 'my_env')

6. workon my_env

   This lets you work on a specific environment (this example is with 'my_env')

Evincive

I want to run workon my_env with sudo. sudo workon my_env says workon: command not found. How do I fix this? – Grandsire

Hi, i have a problem that my virtualenvwrpper.sh doesnt exist in /usr/local/bin/ it exists in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.8/bin/virtualenvwrapper.$ – Aponeurosis

Answer 3

After installing the virtualenvwrapper package using pip, you also have to do some initialisation/set your preferences. See the introduction in the virtualenvwrapper docs.

Most relevant for finding the commands should be sourcing the virtualenvwrapper script into your shell. In the docs it is mentioned as

$ source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

You still have to adjust the path to your setup. My guess for your Mac would be:

$ source /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Chirpy

If you are already in the virtual environment, the virtualenvwrapper.sh is in the bin folder of that virtual environment itself like below { source ~/mypythonenv/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh } – Arel

Answer 4

Simple process

1. sudo apt-get install python-pip(if pip is not installed)
2. sudo pip install virtualenv

3. Create a dir to store your virtualenvs

   mkdir ~/.virtualenvs

4. sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper

5. Run following command

   export WORKON_HOME=~/.virtualenvs

6. Add virtualenvwrapper.sh to .bashrc Add this line to the end of ~/.bashrc so that the virtualenvwrapper commands are loaded.

   . /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

7. you will find .bashrc.sh file in home directory by doing ctrl+h. if not then use find command to find .bashrc.sh "file ls -la ~/ | more"

8. Hit this command

   source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

9. Hit this command

   source ~/.bashrc

Dope

Answer 5

It sounds like you have multiple Python installations on your machine and virtualenvwrapper is not pointing to the right Python.

Find out which Python virtualenvwrapper is using. You get a hint where to look with which virtualenvwrapper.sh (In this case /usr/local/bin):

> /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

If you don't get any return here make sure you use the correct pip when installing. The pip command might link to a different Python then you expect. Check your usr/local/bin directory for pip links (pip, pip2, pip2.7, pip3, pip3.5). It is easy to get system pip, pip2 and pip2.7 mixed up.

After you have found the Python location, add/update all paths in your .profile:

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/venv
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/local/bin/python2
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Finally reload your profile: source ~/.profile

Galina

Why you are using $HOME/Envs and not $HOME/venv? Also I get the error: /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable Any clue what is going on, please? – Shermanshermie

Envs is an arbitrary choice. I like venv better as it is all lowercase :) Re fork: Resource temporarily unavailable you might have reached your system’s maximum number of processes (either system-wide or per user or you ran out of memory). – Galina

Answer 6

I am on Mac OS X 10.9.2 and for me virtualenvwrapper.sh file was present in

/usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

So I simply copied this into ~/.profile file:

source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

And now my ~/.profile file looks something like this:

# MacPorts Installer addition on 2014-02-23_at_17:28:39: adding an appropriate PATH variable for use with MacPorts.
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
# Finished adapting your PATH environment variable for use with MacPorts.

source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

And now I am able to use virtualenvwrapper commands without any issue whatsoever

Stonebroke

Answer 7

Users of the Anaconda (from Continuum) distribution of Python should note that

sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper

will be anaconda-aware. So if you

which python

that should give you an idea of where to point your virtualenv in your .bashrc and/or .profile configuration files.

Pandich

pip can link to another python. which pip and pip -V will give you a better idea to which python pip is linked to and therefore virtualenvwrapper. – Galina