Question

I am trying to use virtualenv for testing purposes. Unfortunately i have run into a bit of a wall,

when i try to pip install my app from the internal pypi server it fails. I think this is because virtualenv is using its own pip instead of the global one.

How can i get it to use the global pip?

this is what i am doing:

virtualenv ENV
source ENV/bin/activate
pip install django  <---- this works
pip install django-tyrell  <---- this cant be found

this is the output

[localhost] run: pip install django-tyrell
[localhost] out: Downloading/unpacking django-tyrell
[localhost] out:   Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement django-tyrell
[localhost] out: No distributions at all found for django-tyrell
[localhost] out: Storing complete log in /tmp/tmpGLJUzf
[localhost] out: 


Fatal error: run() received nonzero return code 1 while executing!

Requested: pip install django-tyrell
Executed: /bin/bash -l -c "cd fabrics && source ENV/bin/activate && pip install django-tyrell"

Answer 1

One solution that comes to mind is to run pip with full path to it, like:

> /usr/bin/pip install django-tyrell

Example assumes your global pip is in /usr/bin.

To add on your 2nd question in comment – no, you can’t avoid installing pip with virtualenv:

def create_environment(home_dir, site_packages=False, clear=False,
                       unzip_setuptools=False, use_distribute=False,
                       prompt=None, search_dirs=None, never_download=False):
    """
    Creates a new environment in ``home_dir``.

    If ``site_packages`` is true, then the global ``site-packages/``
    directory will be on the path.

    If ``clear`` is true (default False) then the environment will
    first be cleared.
    """
    home_dir, lib_dir, inc_dir, bin_dir = path_locations(home_dir)

    py_executable = os.path.abspath(install_python(
        home_dir, lib_dir, inc_dir, bin_dir,
        site_packages=site_packages, clear=clear))

    install_distutils(home_dir)

    if use_distribute:
        install_distribute(py_executable, unzip=unzip_setuptools,
                           search_dirs=search_dirs, never_download=never_download)
    else:
        install_setuptools(py_executable, unzip=unzip_setuptools,
                           search_dirs=search_dirs, never_download=never_download)

    install_pip(py_executable, search_dirs=search_dirs, never_download=never_download)

    install_activate(home_dir, bin_dir, prompt)

From what you can see, install_pip() is called regardless.