Place Pip and Yolk inside or outside a virtual environment?

Question

I'm using virtualenv for sandboxing my Python environment, pip to install/uninstall packages and yolk to list the packages.

I can install packages to my virtual environment by using pip install <package name> -e=<environment name> and I guess I don't need to have pip inside my virtual environment. Am i correct?

If I need to list out all the installed packages in my virtual environment, can I use yolk -l to do so? I know I can do this by keeping yolk installed inside the environment but is this also possible by keeping yolk outside the environment i.e. the global Python installation.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Here is your workflow:

1. Add virtualenv and pip to your global environment.
2. Create virtualenvs
3. Within a virtualenv, add new packages

I recommend you look into virtualenvwrapper. It makes the maintenance of virtualenvs way easier.

1. Download and install virtualenvwrapper in your global environment
2. Create directory ~/.virtualenvs

3. Modify your ~/.bashrc with these statements:

   export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV_ARGS='--no-site-packages --python=python2.6'
   source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Then you can create, delete, modify, and change between virtualenvs easily.

So, for your questions:

1. Should I put pip inside my virtualenv?

   No, do not do that.

2. Should I use yolk to list the packages?

   Not familiar with yolk. I just use pip freeze and then I get a requirements file that lists all the packages for recreating my environment.