Get path to original python executable (not the virtualenv)

Question

Inside a virtualenv, sys.executable gives /path/to/venv/bin/python. How do I get the path of the python that the virtualenv was created from, such as /usr/bin/python3?

For example,

$ cd /tmp
$ virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3 venv
Already using interpreter /usr/bin/python3
Using base prefix '/usr'
New python executable in /tmp/venv/bin/python3
Also creating executable in /tmp/venv/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip, wheel...
done.
$ venv/bin/python -c 'import sys; print(sys.executable)'
/tmp/venv/bin/python

The answer that I want is /usr/bin/python3.

Asked By: Hatshepsut

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Source

Answer 1

In a virtualenv, sys.real_prefix is the directory of the actual Python installation being used by the virtualenv.
Other variables worth checking are sys.base_prefix and sys.base_exec_prefix.
Example code to run in virtualenv:

import sys
print(sys.base_prefix)

Answered By: Ned Batchelder

Answer 2

If you run python -m sysconfig this will output the system configuration to the terminal. There you can see the BINDIR variable.

Therefore you can programatically get this path as well as compute the executable path from within python with:

import sysconfig
from pathlib import Path


bin_dir = sysconfig.get_config_var("BINDIR")
executable_path = Path(bin_dir, "python")

Answered By: Eugen_R

Get path to original python executable (not the virtualenv)

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