Managing Python virtual environments on Mac using pyenv and virtualenvwrapper

2 min readJun 17, 2018

Step 1. Setup pyenv-virtualenv

Make sure that your Mac has brew installed. If not, run the following code to install brew:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

If the above code does not work, go to the Homebrew page to check installation details.

brew install pyenv-virtualenv

Step 2. Download python versions

As an example, we can download target Python 3.4.4 version using pyenv by entering pyenv install 3.4.4, or Python 2.7 by entering pyenv install 2.7

Step 3: Setup virtualenvwrapper

Install pip

Make sure that you have pip installed in your computer. If you don’t have it yet, install by running sudo easy_install pip on your terminal

Install virtualenvwrapper

Then run sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper. Once virtualenvwrapper is installed, look for the the directory of virtualenvwrapper.sh by entering which virtualenvwrapper.sh. Once this is done, this should output something like /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Create virtual environment directory

Create a permanent directory for all virtual environments that will created using virtualenvwrapper by entering mkdir ~/.virtualenvs

Setup environment variables

Create/edit your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bash_rc to contain the following:

# directory for virtualenvs created using virtualenvwrapper
export WORKON_HOME=/Users/vivi/.virtualenvs# ensure all new environments are isolated from the site-packages directory
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV_ARGS='--no-site-packages'# use the same directory for virtualenvs as virtualenvwrapper
export PIP_VIRTUALENV_BASE=$WORKON_HOME# makes pip detect an active virtualenv and install to it
export PIP_RESPECT_VIRTUALENV=true
if [[ -r /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh ]]; then
    source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
else
    echo "WARNING: Can't find virtualenvwrapper.sh"
fi

Enter source ~/.bash_profile or source ~/.bash_rc for the above code to take effect

Step 4. Usage of pyenv virtualenvs and virtualenvwrapper

Setup global python version

Setup a global (pyenv) python version (for example, Python 3.4.4) by entering pyenv global 3.4.4. To check if this is successful, run pyenv which python and this should output something like /Users/vivi/.pyenv/versions/3.4.4/bin/python

Create virtualenv using virtualenvwrapper

mkvirtualenv --python=`pyenv which python` models

List existing virtualenvs

lsvirtualenv

Delete virtualenv

rmvirtualenv

Activate (or switch to) virtualenv

workon virtualenv

Deactivate virtualenv

deactivate virtualenv