No module named 'virtualenvwrapper'

Solution 1:

Instead of specifying a different python interpreter with -p flag, you can also config your desired interpreter as default.

According to virtualenvwrapper's documentation, virtualenvwrapper.sh finds the first python and virtualenv programs on the $PATH and remembers them to use later.

If your virtualenvwrapper is not installed on your OS's default python interpreter (/usr/bin/python), make sure you override the environment variables as below:

• VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON to the full path of your python interpreter
• VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV to the full path of the virtualenv

For example, on my .bash_profile (Mac):

#virtualenvwrapper
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/bin/python3
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/bin/virtualenv
source /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Reload your new variables by running source ~/.bash_profile

Solution 2:

I had the same problem after the recent Homebrew updates.

In the past, most people would have run pip install virtualenvwrapper into the system site packages and it would have worked.

Homebrew broke this workflow by 1) no longer shadowing the system python, and 2) no longer symlinking pip to pip2/pip3.

Most users will realize this when they can't find pip, and then try to use pip2/pip3. However, using pip2/pip3 will create a problem because virtualenvwrapper is now installed for python2/python3, but not for python. So when virtualenvwrapper runs and calls python, it won't find the virtualenvwrapper/virtualenv python packages in the system python's site packages.

Explicitly setting VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON is the cleanest fix, and not a hack. Here's how I did it in my dotfiles

export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/local/bin/python3

Solution 3:

On Ubuntu 20.04, the problem can occur when trying to install virtualenvwrapper with python 3.8 (python 3 default) and init the wrapper with python 2.7 (python 2 default).

TL;DR

Manually set python3 interpreter

export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=$(which python3)
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

In more details, Why does this happen?

Let's get some informations:

$ which python
/usr/bin/python

$ python --version
Python 2.7.18rc1

$ which python3
/usr/bin/python3

$ python3 --version
Python 3.8.2

$ pip3 --version
pip 20.0.2 from /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip (python 3.8)

Following the guidelines, we are asked to install virtualenvwrapper with pip (python 3): pip3 install virtualenvwrapper

Current stable version (4.8.4) of virtualenvwrapper is linking to default python version, which we saw it's python 2.7:

VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON="$(command \which python)"

So, the problem is that we installed virtualenvwrapper in python3 and try to init with python2 (sourcing shell script). The fix is therefore to init with python 3 by overriding default.

But, it is very likely that one of the next releases will include a fix already merged onto master that look from highest to lowest python version:

if [ "${VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON:-}" = "" ]
then
    for NAME in python3 python2 python
    do
        python_executable="$(which $NAME 2>/dev/null)"
        if ! [ -z "$python_executable" ]
        then
            if $python_executable -m 'virtualenvwrapper.hook_loader' --help >/dev/null 2>&1
            then
                VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=$python_executable
                break
            fi
        fi
    done

Using in the documentation, the fix is to manually set the Python interpreter to use before sourcing: Not python (2.7) but python3 (3.8 here)

export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=$(which python3)
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Solution 4:

If you use brew to install python, you will want to ensure that you set this environment variable:

export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/local/bin/python

in your bash_profile (or whatever shell you are using).

Solution 5:

Since I change python versions every now and then, this configuration has been working so far, since it's dynamic:

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
export PROJECT_HOME=$HOME/development
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=$(which python3)
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV=$(which virtualenv)
source $(which virtualenvwrapper.sh)

And then followed by:

source ~/.zshrc