Installing virtualenvwrapper on Windows

Question

I've installed virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper on Windows using easy_install. But mkvirtualenv is missing. I tried to search on my machine but I couldn't find it. I don't know how to solve it. Do you have any idea?

Wheels

I guess it is not for Windows.. – Wheels

I've ported virtualenvwrapper to Powershell. Grab it from the BitBucket repo! – Regulus

BitBucket repo URL has changed - it now lives at bitbucket.org/guillermooo/virtualenvwrapper-powershell (so annoying that BitBucket does not automatically redirect you, as GitHub does). – Sollie

Heads up: virtualenvwrapper-powershell seems to install properly via pip, but I was not able to get it working by running it from source. – Testerman

Answer 1

mkvirtualenv is a bash script so you need to run bash shell to make use of it.

mkvirtualenv is a bash function in the mkvirtualenv_bashrc script

You will need to run this from cygwin under Windows. (You can call a native python from this and not need a cygwin python)

Gerthagerti

@SalmanPK Yes as this is to set the python environment up before you can use it – Gerthagerti

@Mark given you would typically pip install virtualenvwrapper the python env is already setup and usable. – Mitchelmitchell

@Mitchelmitchell address that comment to the questioner I am just reporting on what mkvirtualenv does, see other answers on the Windows alternative – Gerthagerti

@Mark I was just pointing out your premise of "this is to set the python environment" is not accurate. The global Python environment is already setup and therefore virtualenvwrapper could have written its scripts in Python and would be run using the global Python interpreter. For some reason they chose not to... I'm guessing just because the kind of file operations they do are just easier to code in bash and none of them used Windows. – Mitchelmitchell

@Enophage - no they could not write it in Python for a bash shell. mkvirtualenv modifies the current shell - if in python you would have to create a new shell to see the environment. – Gerthagerti

Answer 2

virtualenv helpers for Windows command shell:

• virtualenvwrapper-win is a set of DOS-style batch files (doesn't work in PowerShell).

• env.py is a single Python2 script (blog post).

Gambit

seems to fail in git-bash – Ante

Answer 3

I've ported virtualenvwrapper to Powershell. Grab it from the BitBucket repo!

Regulus

The link seems to be outdated. Would you be able to update it? Also, is it compatible with Powershell v7? The pip version does not seem to be – Jokjakarta

Answer 4

virtualenvwrapper is for Linux/Unix, but this post gives some virtualenv support for Windows users (Bitbucket source is here).

Gwyn

That link is dead :( In the future, please copy/paste the appropriate info into your comment in case of something like this. – Bovid

Looks like you can still access it through the Wayback Machine: web.archive.org/web/20090921091355/http://justindriscoll.us:80/… – Throughway

Answer 5

In windows we need to use virtualenv not mkvirtualenv while creating virtual environments

Emmittemmons

Answer 6

What worked for me (speaking in 2021) is the following:

1. Clone the virtualenvwrapper-powershell git repo
2. Navigate to the folder "virtualenvwrapper-powershell"
3. Open PowerShell there, if you haven't navigated there via PowerShell itself, and execute the command ./Install.ps1
4. Restart PowerShell and that's it: you should see a success message like "Virtual Env Wrapper for Powershell activated"

Aegospotami

Answer 7

Cloning the virtualenvwrapper-powershell from git repo and building it, worked for me

Granado

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