So I develop a python application and I plan to copy the whole folder for my friend to use it as end-user.
But my friend does not have python installed in the computer and I don't want to make them install it since he is not a developer.
In my project I have set up the virtualenv with python.exe inside it but without the site-packages, and I copy the virtualenv together with the project folder.
Is it possible to do this kind of setup so the application in the other end runs without python installed?
virtualenv is a good option if you are transferring the folder between two same operating systems.
In order to include the correspond site packages that are already installed in your computer, install them inside the virtualenv context by doing pip install in the virtualenv shell.
You could use pip freeze to get a list of installed python packages from your computer.
You could then include a .bat file (if it is a windows system) or .sh file (if its a linux system) so it would run your script with the virtualenv context.
Related
I know it possible to have two installs of Python of different versions on a Windows system. But I cannot manage to have two installs of the same revision (in my case 3.8.10) to coexist.
I'm designing an application that creates a Python process. That process needs to run from a specific version of Python with packages of specific versions installed on it. In order to fully control the Python install, decision was made to install it inside the application distribution directory, segregating it from any other Python installed on the system. No environment variable refers to it.
As part of the the deployment/install process for the application, a PowerShell script downloads the Python installer and installs Python and the necessary packages into the application distribution directory. The Python installer is invoked as follows:
.\\python-3.8.10-amd64.exe /quiet InstallAllUsers=1 PrependPath=1 Include_test=0 TargetDir="$curDir\\Python" Include_exe=1 Include_lib=1 Include_pip=1 Include_tcltk=1 | Out-Null
It works well unless the system has already a Python install of the same version installed on it. In that case, running the installer will break the existing install, and not fully install the new one.
I tried to run the installer manually and I noticed that it is able, somehow, to detect that an install of the same revision exist on the system. In that case, it does not allow an new install. To do so, I would have to uninstall Python at its current location to be able to install it somewhere else.
Is there a way to have two distinct installs of Python 3 of the same revision on a Windows system? And if yes, how can it be done?
A better aproach instead of installing python again would be using virtual environments.
To create a new python env. Open the command line (Powershell) on Windows and navigate to the directory you want your python env to be.
Type python3 -m venv tutorial-env. This will create a new python virtual env named tutorial-env
To activate that env on Windows powershell type: tutorial-env\Scripts\activate.bat
To deactivate the env type deactivate
If you are wondering what python virtual environments do. They basically do what you are trying to do but without installing python globally again. When you create a new python env, a new python3 is placed in your env directory, in this case in the tutorial-env directory, and when you activate the environment, it replaces the python global path to the path in your env (in this case in tutorial-env). Now when you are on this virtual env and install new python packages, they will only be available when you activate that env.
For more information about virtual environments please refer to Python official docs.
My question is do i have to install django every single time in my virtual environment in order to run my python files? and is this taking up bunch of space on my machine? My project also uses "matplotlib" and every virtual environment i create it also asks me to import the matplotlib module too. its getting annoying. do i have to do this every time?
Im new to Django. I wanted to run some python files in django but they weren't working, so after some research i found out i needed to run my pycharm project in a virtual environment in order to run these python files.
my folders look like this pycharmProjects -> my project
I enter pycharmProjects and I set up virtual environment using "pienv shell". Then i run "python3 manage.py runserver". It turns out i must install django in the virtual environment before the files run.
Short answer is no, you don't have to use a virtual environment at all and can install your dependancies globally instead. However you will soon find that it will cause a lot of issues. The main reason you would create a virtual environment is to give control of your dependancies and prevent bugs that could be caused because of them having their wires crossed between projects.
Short answer yes.
If you create a virualenv you have to install all packages, that your program needs.
Long answer:
You could install django system wide and then create a virtualenv with the option
--system-site-packages then django would be used from your globally installed python.
(Or you install everything just in your global python, put I personally don't think this is good practice)
If you work with many different projects I think you will avoid a lot of trouble if you use one virtualenv per project.
Trouble meaning that one project breaks, because one pip install for another project changed the version of one package and one project can't handle the newer version.
I would recommend to create a requirements.txt file for each project, that lists the dependencies then you can create the virtualenv with following command
pip install -r requirements.txt
if you have requirement.txt files, then you can create virtualenvs rather quickly if going back to an old project and you can delete the virtualenvs whenever you run out of disk space. If you want to be an the safe side, type pip freeze > pipfreeze.txt prior to deleting the virtualenv and use pip install -r pipfreeze.txt if you want to create one with the same modules and the same versions.
You also might want to look at direnv or autoenv if working on a linux like system.
This will automatically switch to the required virtualenv when changing to a project's working directory.
I'm a huge beginner so I'm not very informed about how packages really work. I know that you should create a virtualenv in your project folder to avoid version conflicts etc, and you're not supposed to put your actual project files in the virtual env. So if your project files are in your project directory on the same level as the virtualenv, can your project files "access" the things installed in the virtualenv? Can files outside of your directory access packages in your virtual env?
Yes, it all depends on the context. Your virtualenv can exist anywhere, be it in your project directory, or somewhere else.
When you want to use the virtualenv, you just have to call source command on it. Then whatever python command you execute on whichever file, will have access to the virtualenv. For example, if you store your virtualenv in /home/user/project/virtualenv, then you would do
source /home/user/project/virtualenv/bin/activate
Then whatever you with the python, it would be the version installed in virtualenv.
You can double check if you're using the global python or the virtualenv python by doing which python. It will either point to the global python path which is usually under /usr/bin/python or /home/user/project/virtualenv/bin/python.
So normally, you first do the source command, then you can do pip install on whatever packages you need already. It will be installed in the virtualenv and it will not conflict with other projects.
I've just setup a new environment for my project and uploaded a python repository including bin, lib and project folder. I'm pretty sure I did same previously and it worked without problem. Now when doing the same on an AWS environment I get the error
-bash: /projects/scrapy/bin/python2.7: cannot execute binary file. However when doing source /projects/scrapy/bin/activate it successfully activates the environment.
From what I understand, python should be able to execute without any issue no matter the environment ?
Any help or pointing to the right direction would be much appreciated!
python should be able to execute without any issue no matter the environment ?
No, the Python binary is tied to your specific OS and computer architecture. Python source code can usually be run on different machines (provided you didn't use OS-specific features), but that's only made possible by compiling a Python interpreter for the specific target environment first.
In other words, a Python binary compiled to run on macOS will not work on Linux.
All that source bin/activate achieves is that it configures your terminal setting to use the bin directory as the first directory on the PATH search path. This doesn't make bin/python work in another environment, it just means that both environments have a working shell interpreter that can run that script.
Create a new virtualenv with a Python binary compiled for Linux, and install the same packages there. Use Pipenv or a requirements.txt file to transfer the dependencies from Mac to Linux.
For example, using Pipenv you'd copy over the Pipfile and Pipfile.lock files to the other computer, then run pipenv install in the directory there and re-create the virtualenv and dependencies from those files.
I recommend you read up on Python development best practices in the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python; this includes such topics on how to manage an environment for a project.
I have an existing django project which I have developed using python libraries installed in system and adding missing ones to the system. But now conflict has come for python-requests as system has 2.2 version but I need >2.5. Dont't want to uninstall and put newer one as it may break the OS. So now, I want to use virtual env and install packages there in complete isolation to that of OS.
I think the solution you're looking for is to download a different version of python without uninstalling your original, then start up virtualenv venv, but by passing in a path to the new python.exe file. Like this: virtualenv -p venv <path-to-executable-here>, then just do source bin\activate, as usual. This starts the virtual environment using the python executable you passed to virtualenv through the terminal.
Also, this might not be the only way, but, there's something called ModuleFinder which enables you to get a list of all the modules your script is importing--That is if you don't want to type them out manually, and you have extra modules installed (otherwise pip freeze > requirements.txt would do the job, and your new virtual environment would install all the packages in requirements.txt).