Question

I’m using pydev with Eclipse and virtualenv with python2.7 on Debian Squeeze
My python script requires the variable os.environ['VIRTUAL_ENV'] but there is no VIRTUAL_ENV key when I debug.
However if I type in the terminal:

. /my_virtualenv/bin/activate
python
import os
os.environ['VIRTUAL_ENV']

then I can see VIRTUAL_ENV is in the variable os.environ
Any clues?

Answer 1

It appears that virtualenv sets the VIRTUAL_ENV variable as part of it’s activate script. Pydev doesn’t run that activate script, so it doesn’t have knowledge of that environment variable.

You can set it in the run configuration though.

1. Click the little down arrow next to the run icon.
2. Click “Run Configurations…”
3. In the left pane select the run configuration you want to modify.
4. Select the “Environment” tab on the right side.
5. Click “New” and put VIRTUAL_ENV as the name and the value that you desire.