Guide for Creating Virtual Environments for Python

Reason

To load modules and packages that are only relevant to you or
to develop and test new modules and packages not ready for general use.


How To

1) Generate a virtual environment

Note: Run commands outside repositories, suggested place is home directory

Generate a blank virtual environment using python2.7: 

virtualenv -p python2.7 ENV

Generate a snapshot environment with base packages(BeautifulSoup==3.2.1 and MySQL-python==1.2.3) used for ENCODE:

python ~/kent/python/ucsc_virtualenv.py -p python2.7 ENV

2) Switch to use virtual environement

Bash:

source ENV/bin/activate

C-Shell:

source ENV/bin/activate.csh

3) Load packages and modules

Third-Party:

pip install <package name>

pip is an easy_install replacement. For more information visit: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pip

Internal packages (use setup.py located in package directory e.g. kent/python/lib):

python setup.py install

4) Deactivate use of virtual environment

deactivate