Why module installed in virtual environment is available in bash and not in idle?

Question

I'm running Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS
System wide python version is 2.7.17 (obviously), I also have number of virtual environments set up. Today happened something that I don't yet understand, namely:

I activated my (3.8) environment
Then downloaded a module:
```
(3.8) $ pip install algorithms
```
Started up idle-python3.8:
```
(3.8) $ idle-python3.8 &
```
Attempted to import my freshly downloaded module:
```
>>> import algorithms
```

Then, I saw this error popping up:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#0>", line 1, in <module>
    import algorithms
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'algorithms'

I closed idle and made sure the module is installed:

(3.8) $ pip list
Package                Version
---------------------- -------
algorithms             0.1.4
astroid                2.4.2
autopep8               1.5.4
backcall               0.2.0
decorator              4.4.2
......
.....

I had to make sure...:
```
(3.8) $ python --version
Python 3.8.0
```

Then I tried this:

(3.8) $ python3.8
Python 3.8.0 (default, Oct 28 2019, 16:14:01) 
[GCC 8.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import algorithms
>>>

What?! How?! Can someone enlighten me please? Thank you.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 17 '20 at 20:05

2

Idle runs in global environment. You have to start it like this:

python -m idlelib.idle

See detailed answer here: How to launch python Idle from a virtual environment (virtualenv)

answered Oct 17 '20 at 20:05

Yuri Ginsburg

2,302
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Why module installed in virtual environment is available in bash and not in idle?

1 Answers1