Error "virtualenv : command not found" but install location is in PYTHONPATH
Question:
This has been driving me crazy for the past 2 days.
I installed virtualenv on my Macbook using pip install virtualenv.
But when I try to create a new virtualenv using virtualenv venv, I get the error saying “virtualenv : command not found”.
I used pip show virtualenv and the location of the installation is “Location: /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages” but I can’t figure out where the executable is. I tried dozens other similar looking posts but those solutions do not work for me.
Any ideas what might be going wrong here?
Answers:
The only workable approach I could figure out (with help from @Gator_Python was to do python -m virtualenv venv. This creates the virtual environment and works as expected.
I have custom python installed and maybe that’s why the default approach doesn’t work for me.
As mentioned in the comments, you’ve got the virtualenv module installed properly in the expected environment since python -m venv allows you to create virtualenv’s.
The fact that virtualenv is not a recognized command is a result of the virtualenv.py not being in your system PATH and/or not being executable. The root cause could be outdated distutils or setuptools.
You should attempt to locate the virtualenv.py file, ensure it is executable (chmod +x) and that its location is in your system PATH. On my system, virtualenv.py is in the ../Pythonx.x/Scripts folder, but this may be different for you.
Could it be that you are using Anaconda package manager? If so, then it has it’s own virtual environment system which you setup as follows:
conda create --name venv
I had the same issue (although on ubuntu), a simple solution is instead of doing pip install virtualenv, you precede the commend with "sudo".
A little inspection reveals the reason behind this fix:
pip install virtualenv tries to put an executable under /usr/local/bin so that it can be invoked from command line, but it failed because only root has write permission to that directory
an alternative is pip install --user virtualenv, here are some further readings 1,2
On macOS Mojave
First check python is in the path.
python --version
Second check pip is installed.
pip --version
If it is not installed.
brew install pip
Third install virtualenv
sudo -H pip install virtualenv
I succeded creating manually a link to location/virtualenv.py in /usr/local/bin, naming it virtualenv and adding +x attribute on file
➜ ~ pip show virtualenv
Name: virtualenv
Version: 16.6.0
Summary: Virtual Python Environment builder
Home-page: https://virtualenv.pypa.io/
Author: Ian Bicking
Author-email: [email protected]
License: MIT
Location: /home/prsadev/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages
Requires:
~ chmod +x /home/prsadev/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/virtualenv.py
~ sudo ln -sf /home/prsadev/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/virtualenv.py /usr/local/bin/virtualenv
I tried to have virtualenv at a random location & faced the same issue on a UBUNTU machine, when I tried to run my ‘venv’. What solved my issue was :-
$virtualenv -p python3 venv
Also,instead of using $activate try :-
$source activate
If you look at the activate script(or $cat activate), you will find the same in comment.
For Python 3
python3 -m virtualenv venv
Had the same problem on Windows. Command not found and can’t find the executable in the directory given by pip show.
Fixed it by adding "C:Users{My User}AppDataRoamingPythonPython39Scripts" to the PATH environment variable.
Install virtualenv from https://pypi.org/project/virtualenv
python -m pip install –user virtualenv
sudo /usr/bin/easy_install virtualenv
This solved my similar problem!
You need to look online on how to create a virtual environement with python X.X.X (replace x.x.x with your python version)
mine was python 3.4.3 so bellow is how should i deal with it:
sudo python3 -m venv aramisvenv
I use asdf and had to do a reshim after installing virtualenv. asdf reshim
Fixed due to this response
This has been driving me crazy for the past 2 days.
I installed virtualenv on my Macbook using pip install virtualenv.
But when I try to create a new virtualenv using virtualenv venv, I get the error saying “virtualenv : command not found”.
I used pip show virtualenv and the location of the installation is “Location: /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages” but I can’t figure out where the executable is. I tried dozens other similar looking posts but those solutions do not work for me.
Any ideas what might be going wrong here?
The only workable approach I could figure out (with help from @Gator_Python was to do python -m virtualenv venv. This creates the virtual environment and works as expected.
I have custom python installed and maybe that’s why the default approach doesn’t work for me.
As mentioned in the comments, you’ve got the virtualenv module installed properly in the expected environment since python -m venv allows you to create virtualenv’s.
The fact that virtualenv is not a recognized command is a result of the virtualenv.py not being in your system PATH and/or not being executable. The root cause could be outdated distutils or setuptools.
You should attempt to locate the virtualenv.py file, ensure it is executable (chmod +x) and that its location is in your system PATH. On my system, virtualenv.py is in the ../Pythonx.x/Scripts folder, but this may be different for you.
Could it be that you are using Anaconda package manager? If so, then it has it’s own virtual environment system which you setup as follows:
conda create --name venv
I had the same issue (although on ubuntu), a simple solution is instead of doing pip install virtualenv, you precede the commend with "sudo".
A little inspection reveals the reason behind this fix:
pip install virtualenv tries to put an executable under /usr/local/bin so that it can be invoked from command line, but it failed because only root has write permission to that directory
an alternative is pip install --user virtualenv, here are some further readings 1,2
On macOS Mojave
First check python is in the path.
python --version
Second check pip is installed.
pip --version
If it is not installed.
brew install pip
Third install virtualenv
sudo -H pip install virtualenv
I succeded creating manually a link to location/virtualenv.py in /usr/local/bin, naming it virtualenv and adding +x attribute on file
➜ ~ pip show virtualenv
Name: virtualenv
Version: 16.6.0
Summary: Virtual Python Environment builder
Home-page: https://virtualenv.pypa.io/
Author: Ian Bicking
Author-email: [email protected]
License: MIT
Location: /home/prsadev/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages
Requires:
~ chmod +x /home/prsadev/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/virtualenv.py
~ sudo ln -sf /home/prsadev/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/virtualenv.py /usr/local/bin/virtualenv
I tried to have virtualenv at a random location & faced the same issue on a UBUNTU machine, when I tried to run my ‘venv’. What solved my issue was :-
$virtualenv -p python3 venv
Also,instead of using $activate try :-
$source activate
If you look at the activate script(or $cat activate), you will find the same in comment.
For Python 3
python3 -m virtualenv venv
Had the same problem on Windows. Command not found and can’t find the executable in the directory given by pip show.
Fixed it by adding "C:Users{My User}AppDataRoamingPythonPython39Scripts" to the PATH environment variable.
Install virtualenv from https://pypi.org/project/virtualenv
python -m pip install –user virtualenv
sudo /usr/bin/easy_install virtualenv
This solved my similar problem!
You need to look online on how to create a virtual environement with python X.X.X (replace x.x.x with your python version)
mine was python 3.4.3 so bellow is how should i deal with it:
sudo python3 -m venv aramisvenv
I use asdf and had to do a reshim after installing virtualenv. asdf reshim
Fixed due to this response