Recently I have started to use virtualenv, and it has changed my life, and made so many things so much easier. However, some packages I would like available in all virtualenvs, and I haven't figured out how to do this. Is there a way to have pip install certain packages every time I create a new virtualenv?
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elethan
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From documentation: If you build with virtualenv --system-site-packages ENV, your virtual environment will inherit packages from /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages (or wherever your global site-packages directory is).
Sergey Gornostaev
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If there is a particular set you always want, which is distinct from the global site-packages collection, you could write a simple wrapper script which sets up the env, activates it, and installs those packages.
#!/bin/sh
virtualenv "$1"
. "$1"/bin/activate
pip install six # f'rinstance
If you save this as venvwrapper you cound alias virtualenv=venvwrapper in your .bashrc or similar.
tripleee
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While the other answers to this question are both very valuable and informative, I was looking for a solution similar to that suggested by @Sergey Gornostaev. However, I am on Ubuntu and install most of my Python packages (at least the ones I want available globally) through apt. That means my packages end up in dist-packages while site-packages remains empty, so I can't use @Sergey's solution. Instead, I used the solution in this answer.
Basically, I install the packages I want available in all environments through apt if possible. Then I add the following (or some variation of it) to my .bashrc:
export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages:/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages
This way all those packages are available, and then I can install indivdual packages sepecifc to a given virtual environment through pip from within the virtualenv. It might not be an ideal solution, but it meets my current needs, so this is what I will be using for now.
