Question

$ python minitwit_tests.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "minitwit_tests.py", line 12, in <module>
    import minitwit
  File "/.../flask/examples/minitwit/minitwit.py", line 17, in <module>
    from flask import Flask, request, session, url_for, redirect, \
ImportError: No module named flask

I don’t have permissions to be a root so I need some flag or environment variable to specify where to load the flask

$ pip install -E lib Flask &> /dev/null

now I need to specify lib to be the dir, how to dot that?

Answer 1

You need to enable the virtualenv by running source lib/bin/activate in your shell.

In case lib is a folder you just created manually (i.e. not using virtualenv), delete it and recreate it as a virtualenv:

virtualenv --no-site-packages --distribute lib
source lib/bin/activate
pip install flask

In case you are curious about the virtualenv options:

• --no-site-packages prevents it from using globally installed python packages. This ensures you exactly know which packages are available and have the version you need.
• --distribute ensures you have pip