[Django]-How to install virtualenv without using sudo?

by

29👍

✅

This solution is suitable in cases where no virtualenv is available system wide and you can not become root to install virtualenv. When I set up a debian for python development or deployment I always apt-get install python-virtualenv. It is more convenient to have it around than to do the bootstrap pointed out below. But without root power it may be the the way to go:

There is a bootstrap mechanism that should get you going.

Read: http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall#creating-a-virtual-python

In essence you would do this in your home directory in a unix environment:

Given your python is version 2.6


    $ mkdir ~/bin
    $ mkdir -p ~/lib/python2.6
    $ mkdir -p ~/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages
    $ wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/virtual-python.py
    $ python virtual-python.py --no-site-packages
    $ wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
    $ ~/bin/python ez_setup.py
    $ ~/local/bin/easy_install virtualenv
    $ ~/local/bin/virtualenv --no-site-packages thereyouare

There may be room for optimization. I don’t like the local path. Just bin and lib would be nice. But it does its job.

👤itsafire

17👍

You can also use the command below, it worked for me without sudo access.
You may also need to modify your PYTHONPATH environment variable using export, see this SO answer for more details.

pip install --user virtualenv

👤champost

14👍

The general idea is to install virtualenv itself globaly, i.e. sudo easy_install virtualenv or sudo pip install virtualenv, but then create the actual virtual environment (“run virtualenv”) locally.

👤ThiefMaster

10👍

http://opensourcehacker.com/2012/09/16/recommended-way-for-sudo-free-installation-of-python-software-with-virtualenv/ suggests the following:

curl -L -o virtualenv.py https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pypa/virtualenv/master/virtualenv.py
python virtualenv.py vvv-venv
. vvv-venv/bin/activate
pip install vvv

It seems to work well. It lets me install https://github.com/miohtama/vvv with pip.

If you get:

Cannot find sdist setuptools-*.tar.gz
Cannot find sdist pip-*.tar.gz

Try --extra-search-dir after downloading the tarballs at https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/tree/develop/virtualenv_support

👤Philip Durbin

4👍

This worked for me:

pip install --target=$HOME/virtualenv/ virtualenv
cd somewhere/
python $HOME/virtualenv/virtualenv.py env
. env/bin/activate

Now I can pip install whatever I want (except for everything that needs to compile stuff with gcc and has missing dependencies such as the python development libraries and Python.h).

👤jozxyqk

4👍

Basically the idea is to install virtualenv (or any other python package) into ${HOME}/.local. This is the most appropriate location since it is included into python path by default (and not only Python).

That you do by pip3 install virtualenv --prefix=${HOME}/.local (you may need to expand ${HOME}).
Make sure that you have export PATH=${HOME}/.local/bin:${PATH} in your ~/.profile (you may need to source ~/.profile it if just added)

👤Slava

2👍

I’ve created a “portable” version of virtualenv.

wget https://bitbucket.org/techtonik/locally/raw/tip/06.get-virtualenv.py
python 06.get-virtualenv.py

It downloads virtualenv.py script with dependencies into .locally subdir and executes it from there. Once that’s done, the script with .locally/ subdir can be copied anywhere.

👤anatoly techtonik

2👍

I solved my problem installing virtualenv for each user.

python3 -m pip install --user virtualenv
👤Weenit

1👍

You might want to consider using Anaconda. It’s a full-fledged Python distribution, that lives in a folder in e.g. your home directory. No sudo is necessary at any point and you get most of the popular packages.

$ wget https://.../Anaconda2-2.5.0-Linux-x86_64.sh # check the website for the exact URL, it can change
$ bash Anaconda2-2.5.0-Linux-x86_64.sh
$ conda install virtualenv
👤stpk

1👍

The easiest way I have seen so far is to install Anaconda.
It may be an overkill for you. For me the centOS running on the remote server had only python2.6 installed. Anaconda by default installs everything locally + it is python2.7

curl -O https://repo.continuum.io/archive/Anaconda2-4.2.0-Linux-x86_64.sh

Then

bash Anaconda2-4.2.0-Linux-x86_64.sh

Boom. You have all the packages like numpy and pip installed.
Then if you want virtualenv, just type

pip install virtualenv
👤Binu Jasim

1👍

sudo virtualenv -p python myenv1

sudo su
source myenv1/bin/activate


pip install mypackage

this is will install inside virtual environment

👤Shivaji fullstack

0👍

The lack of sudo is a common situation in many shared remote server.

It turns out, there is a simpler, lightweight, more secure solution. Just download an official "portable" virtualenv from here: https://bootstrap.pypa.io/virtualenv.pyz

And that is it! You can now run python virtualenv.pyz --help to your heart’s content.

Official document: https://virtualenv.pypa.io/en/latest/installation.html#via-zipapp

👤RayLuo

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