Question

I just started using virtualenv to develop my Django applications and I really like it so far. One question that came up now is how I install programs, that are non-python, into my virtualenv.

I have for example a fabric script that lints all my code. In there I have a task which uses csslint for linting my css files. But csslint is a npm package. So how do I handle my virtualenv dependencies that are not a python package?

Answer 1

I’ve done this once (while ago), and it worked quite good. The trick is to install node.js and npm to virtualenv:

workon myenv
cd node-v0.4.8
./configure –prefix=“/path/to/myenv/”
make
make install

and then

workon myenv
git clone git://github.com/isaacs/npm.git
cd npm
make
make install

This exact commands above are outdated, but I think it should be possible to do something similar with modern node.js and npm.