Question

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Revert the `–no-site-packages` option with virtualenv

I’ve created a virtual environment using the virtualenvwrapper documentation as follows:

$ pip install virtualenvwrapper
$ export WORKON_HOME=~/Envs
$ mkdir -p $WORKON_HOME
$ source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
$ mkvirtualenv env1

It works fine for the most part, but I’ve run into a few Django issues that require me to install some global packages outside of my virtual environment. Once I’ve installed these packages, how to I update my virtual environment to pull in these new packages? Or do I need to recreate the environment from scratch?

Answer 1

This question is a partial duplicate of: Revert the `–no-site-packages` option with virtualenv

However since this question specifically mentions virtualenvwrapper, the simplest solution when using virtualenvwrapper is to simply use its toggleglobalsitepackages command. It takes no parameters and affects only the active environment.

$ workon env1
(env1)$ toggleglobalsitepackages
Enabled global site-packages
(env1)$ toggleglobalsitepackages
Disabled global site-packages

Alternatively you can reinstall the virtualenv, reconfiguring it to have access to global packages, while keeping the packages already installed there with the command:

$ mkvirtualenv --system-site-packages env1

(thanks to @Adaephon for the heads up regarding toggleglobalsitepackages)