How to create a virtualenv with Python3.3 in Ubuntu?

I'm running Precise Pangolin amd64. I installed Python 3.3 from ppa:fkrull/deadsnakes.

Now I want to actually use this new Python version in a virtualenv. But How can I do this? I get the following error:

$ virtualenv --no-site-packages --distribute -p /usr/bin/python3.3 ~/.virtualenvs/pywork3 Running virtualenv with interpreter /usr/bin/python3.3 The --no-site-packages flag is deprecated; it is now the default behavior. New python executable in /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin/python3.3 Also creating executable in /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin/python Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/site.py", line 73, in <module> __boot() File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/site.py", line 2, in __boot import sys, imp, os, os.path ImportError: No module named 'imp' ERROR: The executable /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin/python3.3 is not functioning ERROR: It thinks sys.prefix is '/home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs' (should be '/home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3') ERROR: virtualenv is not compatible with this system or executable 

If instead, I explicitly use python3.3 to call virtualenv, I get this error:

$ python3.3 /usr/bin/virtualenv --no-site-packages --distribute -p /usr/bin/python3.3 ~/.virtualenvs/pywork3 Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/virtualenv", line 2, in <module> import virtualenv ImportError: No module named 'virtualenv' 

I'm stuck. Any help is greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Following the advise by @thefourtheye, I purged my local site-packages directory (effectively only deleting site.py). Now I'm getting a step further, but virtualenv complains about a missing easy_install:

 Error [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin/easy_install' while executing command /home2/USERNAME/.virt...rk3/bin/easy_install /usr/share/python-virtualenv/pip-1.1.tar.gz 

I did install the package python3-setuptools, which installs the Py3 version of easy_install.

EDIT2:

Here's the verbose output, without explicitly passing --distribute and --no-site-packages, as these two switches are default behaviour of my virtualenv:

$ virtualenv --verbose -p /usr/bin/python3.3 ~/.virtualenvs/pywork3 Running virtualenv with interpreter /usr/bin/python3.3 Creating /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3 Symlinking Python bootstrap modules Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/config-3.3m Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/lib-dynload Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/os.py Ignoring built-in bootstrap module: posix Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/posixpath.py Cannot import bootstrap module: nt Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/ntpath.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/genericpath.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/fnmatch.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/locale.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/encodings Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/codecs.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/stat.py Cannot import bootstrap module: UserDict Cannot import bootstrap module: copy_reg Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/types.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/re.py Cannot import bootstrap module: sre Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/sre_parse.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/sre_constants.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/sre_compile.py Ignoring built-in bootstrap module: zlib Cannot import bootstrap module: _abcoll Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/warnings.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/linecache.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/abc.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/io.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/_weakrefset.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/copyreg.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/tempfile.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/random.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/__future__.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/collections Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/keyword.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/tarfile.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/shutil.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/struct.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/copy.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/base64.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/bisect.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/_dummy_thread.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/hashlib.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/heapq.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/hmac.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/reprlib.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/rlcompleter.py Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/weakref.py Creating /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/site-packages Writing /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/site.py Writing /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/orig-prefix.txt Writing /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/no-global-site-packages.txt Creating parent directories for /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/include Symlinking /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/include/python3.3m Creating /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin New python executable in /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin/python3.3 Changed mode of /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin/python3.3 to 0o755 Also creating executable in /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin/python Changed mode of /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin/python to 0o755 Testing executable with /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin/python3.3 -c " import sys prefix = sys.prefix if sys.version_info[0] == 3: prefix = prefix.encode('utf8') if hasattr(sys.stdout, 'detach'): sys.stdout = sys.stdout.detach() elif hasattr(sys.stdout, 'buffer'): sys.stdout = sys.stdout.buffer sys.stdout.write(prefix) " Got sys.prefix result: '/home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3' Creating /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/distutils Writing /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/distutils/__init__.py Writing /home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/lib/python3.3/distutils/distutils.cfg Using existing distribute egg: /usr/share/python-virtualenv/distribute-0.6.24.tar.gz Installing distribute..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................done. Installing existing pip-1.1.tar.gz distribution: /usr/share/python-virtualenv/pip-1.1.tar.gz Installing pip... Error [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin/easy_install' while executing command /home2/USERNAME/.virt...rk3/bin/easy_install /usr/share/python-virtualenv/pip-1.1.tar.gz ...Installing pip...done. Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/virtualenv.py", line 2283, in <module> main() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/virtualenv.py", line 938, in main never_download=options.never_download) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/virtualenv.py", line 1054, in create_environment install_pip(py_executable, search_dirs=search_dirs, never_download=never_download) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/virtualenv.py", line 643, in install_pip filter_stdout=_filter_setup) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/virtualenv.py", line 976, in call_subprocess cwd=cwd, env=env) File "/usr/lib/python3.3/subprocess.py", line 818, in __init__ restore_signals, start_new_session) File "/usr/lib/python3.3/subprocess.py", line 1416, in _execute_child raise child_exception_type(errno_num, err_msg) FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home2/USERNAME/.virtualenvs/pywork3/bin/easy_install' 

7 Answers

Python 3.3 has venv built-in.

Simply run

pyvenv-3.3 /path/to/environment 

And then to activate it

source /path/to/environment/bin/activate 

This built-in version of virtualenv is much more flexible than what you're probably used to. For example, you can extend EnvBuilder to do pretty much whatever you want. You can copy an example implementation of EnvBuilder from the link below and play around with it:

That script above likely does most of what we expect to get out of virtualenv. So if you just need a virtualenv with easy_install and pip, you should be good to go.

See @MarkOfSine's edits below for clarification on how to get running if you're still confused.

To add to the above, and as per docs:
For example, after executing: pyvenv-3.3 /path/to/my_project/venv
You can run distribute_setup.py, which seems to do various things, but essentially you end up with easy_install in your ./my_project/venv/bin directory.
This can then be used to install pip and the like.

It does not say where you should get distribute_setup.py from, so I downloaded from:

and using the activated environment:

cd /path/to/my_project source venv/bin/activate 

ran :

python distribute_setup.py 

and

easy_install pip 

Which then completed the setup of the virtual environment more inline with virtualenv on python 2.x

It is easier than as it seems:

virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3 yourenv source yourenv/bin/activate pip install package-name 

really works :)

1. Take backup of site-packages.

   cp -r /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ /tmp/site-packages

2. Truncate that directory

   rm -rf /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/

3. Now try the same

   virtualenv --no-site-packages --distribute -p /usr/bin/python3.3 ~/.virtualenvs/pywork3

4. To install without pip

   virtualenv --no-site-packages --distribute -p /usr/bin/python3.3 ~/.virtualenvs/pywork3 --no-pip

EDIT: Looks like the version of virtualenv (1.7.1.2) and python3.3 are not compatible. So, please try this

1. Uninstall python-virtualenv using sudo apt-get remove python-virtualenv

2. wget sudo python ez_setup.py This will install latest easy_install.

3. sudo easy_install pip

4. sudo pip install virtualenv

5. virtualenv --no-site-packages --distribute -p /usr/bin/python3.3 ~/.virtualenvs/pywork3

You are doing this far too complicated. If it's included in python3, just create it with :

python3 -m venv 

You can even create an alias if you wish to

alias virtualenv3='python3 -m venv' 

Depending on the machine, you might need to specify the interpreter:

alias virtualenv3='python3 -m venv -p python3' 

The steps that worked for me: On MAC OSX 10.9.5

1. Download and install Python-3.4.3 manually.

   P3PATH=/Users/$USER/Python3 mkdir -p $P3PATH cd $P3PATH tar -zxvf Python-3.4.3.tgz ./configure --prefix=$P3PATH/Python-3.4.3 make; make install 

2. Create a virtualenv.

   $P3PATH/Python-3.4.3/bin/pyvenv py3env source py3env/bin/activate 

Note:
virtualenv -p <path to python3> py3env did not work:

Error due to zlib 

On Ubuntu 14.04 sudo apt-get install python3-pip sudo pip install virtualenv virtualenv-3.4 --no-site-packages venv 

just be sure that you installed pip and venv:

sudo apt install python3-pip sudo apt install python3-venv 

Then you can use it like this:

python3 -m venv ~/env-sample . ~/env-sample/bin/activate