What's the proper way to install pip, virtualenv, and distribute for Python?

You can do this without installing anything into python itself.

You don't need sudo or any privileges.

You don't need to edit any files.

Install virtualenv into a bootstrap virtual environment. Use the that virtual environment to create more. Since virtualenv ships with pip and distribute, you get everything from one install.

1. Download virtualenv:
   • http://pypi.python.org/pypi/virtualenv
   • https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/v/virtualenv/virtualenv-12.0.7.tar.gz (or whatever is the latest version!)
2. Unpack the source tarball
3. Use the unpacked tarball to create a clean virtual environment. This virtual environment will be used to "bootstrap" others. All of your virtual environments will automatically contain pip and distribute.
4. Using pip, install virtualenv into that bootstrap environment.
5. Use that bootstrap environment to create more!

Here is an example in bash:

# Select current version of virtualenv:
VERSION=12.0.7
# Name your first "bootstrap" environment:
INITIAL_ENV=bootstrap
# Set to whatever python interpreter you want for your first environment:
PYTHON=$(which python)
URL_BASE=https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/v/virtualenv

# --- Real work starts here ---
curl -O $URL_BASE/virtualenv-$VERSION.tar.gz
tar xzf virtualenv-$VERSION.tar.gz
# Create the first "bootstrap" environment.
$PYTHON virtualenv-$VERSION/virtualenv.py $INITIAL_ENV
# Don't need this anymore.
rm -rf virtualenv-$VERSION
# Install virtualenv into the environment.
$INITIAL_ENV/bin/pip install virtualenv-$VERSION.tar.gz

Now you can use your "bootstrap" environment to create more:

# Create a second environment from the first:
$INITIAL_ENV/bin/virtualenv py-env1
# Create more:
$INITIAL_ENV/bin/virtualenv py-env2

Go nuts!

Note

This assumes you are not using a really old version of virtualenv. Old versions required the flags --no-site-packges (and depending on the version of Python, --distribute). Now you can create your bootstrap environment with just python virtualenv.py path-to-bootstrap or python3 virtualenv.py path-to-bootstrap.

I think Glyph means do something like this:

1. Create a directory ~/.local, if it doesn't already exist.
2. In your ~/.bashrc, ensure that ~/.local/bin is on PATH and that ~/.local is on PYTHONPATH.

3. Create a file ~/.pydistutils.cfg which contains

   [install]
   prefix=~/.local
   

   It's a standard ConfigParser-format file.

4. Download distribute_setup.py and run python distribute_setup.py (no sudo). If it complains about a non-existing site-packages directory, create it manually:

   mkdir -p ~/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/

5. Run which easy_install to verify that it's coming from ~/.local/bin

6. Run pip install virtualenv
7. Run pip install virtualenvwrapper
8. Create a virtual env containing folder, say ~/.virtualenvs

9. In ~/.bashrc add

   export WORKON_HOME
   source ~/.local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
   

That's it, no use of sudo at all and your Python environment is in ~/.local, completely separate from the OS's Python. Disclaimer: Not sure how compatible virtualenvwrapper is in this scenario - I couldn't test it on my system :-)