Question

But I’m looking to install freetype, libjpeg, PIL build to add image processing to my django projects I’ve followed this installation http://dakrauth.com/blog/entry/python-and-django-setup-mac-os-x-leopard/ which installs it site wide but I can get it inside my virtualenv project.

Do I just cd into the working directory of the virtualenv (project) and install it there and will it just be available for that project or do I use pip? I couldn’t find the packages in the pip repository. Can someone enlighten me please.

curl -O http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/d/distribute/distribute-0.6.21.tar.gz
tar -xzvf distribute-0.6.21.tar.gz
cd distribute-0.6.21
python distribute_setup.py
easy_install pip
pip install virtualenv
virtualenv --distribute --no-site-packages [myproject]
cd [myproject]
source bin/activate (this activates the sandbox that virtualenv created)
pip install django mysql-python

Answer 1

Go to the working directory of the virtualenv and then run

$ source bin/activate

This will set that virtual environment as your active one. So now that it’s active, you can install what you want, either manually (by following those steps on the site you linked to) or with pip and it will automatically install it into your active virtualenv.

If you then, say, run python manage.py runserver while the same virtualenv is active, django will have access to your newly installed package. Once you want to unset that virtual environment as your active one, simply do deactivate.