Installation

Warning

We advise installing virtualenv-1.9 or greater. Prior to version 1.9, the pip included in virtualenv did not download from PyPI over SSL.

Warning

When using pip to install virtualenv, we advise using pip 1.3 or greater. Prior to version 1.3, pip did not download from PyPI over SSL.

Warning

We advise against using easy_install to install virtualenv when using setuptools < 0.9.7, because easy_install didn’t download from PyPI over SSL and was broken in some subtle ways.

In Windows, run the pip provided by your Python installation to install virtualenv.

> pip install virtualenv

In non-Windows systems it is discouraged to run pip as root including with sudo. Generally use your system package manager if it provides a package. This avoids conflicts in versions and file locations between the system package manager and pip. See your distribution’s package manager documentation for instructions on using it to install virtualenv.

Using pip install --user is less hazardous but can still cause trouble within the particular user account. If a system package expects the system provided virtualenv and an incompatible version is installed with --user that package may have problems within that user account. To install within your user account with pip (if you have pip 1.3 or greater installed):

$ pip install --user virtualenv

Note: The specific bin path may vary per distribution but is often ~/.local/bin and must be added to your $PATH if not already present.

Or to get the latest unreleased dev version:

$ pip install --user https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/tarball/master

To install version X.X.X globally from source:

$ pip install --user https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/tarball/X.X.X

To use locally from source:

$ curl --location --output virtualenv-X.X.X.tar.gz https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/tarball/X.X.X
$ tar xvfz virtualenv-X.X.X.tar.gz
$ cd pypa-virtualenv-YYYYYY
$ python virtualenv.py myVE

Note

The virtualenv.py script is not supported if run without the necessary pip/setuptools/virtualenv distributions available locally. All of the installation methods above include a virtualenv_support directory alongside virtualenv.py which contains a complete set of pip and setuptools distributions, and so are fully supported.