[Python-Dev] Proposal for virtualenv functionality in Python

[Guido van Rossum]

This sounds like a great idea (especially since I proposed something a
little bit like it in yesterday's language summit :-).

I have to admit I cannot remember what uses are made of sys.prefix; it
would be good to explicitly enumerate these in the PEP when you write
it.

Regarding the Windows question, does virtualenv work on Windows? If
so, its approach might be adopted. If not, maybe we shouldn't care (in
the first version anyway)?

--Guido

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 1:49 PM, Ian Bicking <ianb at colorstudy.com> wrote:
> This is a proto-proposal for including some functionality from virtualenv in
> Python itself.  I'm not entirely confident about what I'm proposing, so it's
> not really PEP-ready, but I wanted to get feedback...
> First, a bit about how virtualenv works (this will use Linux conventions;
> Windows and some Mac installations are slightly different):
> * Let's say you are creating an environment in ~/env/
> * /usr/bin/python is *copied* to ~/env/bin/python
> * This alone sets sys.prefix to ~/env/ (via existing code in Python)
> * At this point things are broken because the standard library is not
> available
> * virtualenv creates ~/env/lib/pythonX.Y/site.py, which adds the system
> standard library location (/usr/lib/pythonX.Y) to sys.path
> * site.py itself requires several modules to work, and each of these modules
> (from a pre-determined list of modules) is symlinked over from the standard
> library into ~/env/lib/pythonX.Y/
> * site.py may or may not add /usr/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages to sys.path
> * *Any* time you use ~/env/bin/python you'll get sys.prefix of ~/env/, and
> the appropriate path.  No environmental variable is required.
> * No compiler is used; this is a fairly light tool
> There are some tweaks to this that could be made, but I believe virtualenv
> basically does things The Right Way.  By setting sys.prefix All Tools Work
> (there are some virtualenv alternatives that do isolation without setting
> sys.prefix, but they typically break more often than virtualenv, or only
> support a limited number of workflows).  Also by using a distinct
> interpreter (~/env/bin/python) it works fairly consistently and reliably
> compared to techniques like an environmental variable.  The one serious
> alternative is what buildout (and virtualenv --relocatable) does, which is
> to use the system Python and change the path at the beginning of all scripts
> (it requires its own installer to accomplish this consistently).
> But virtualenv is kind of a hack, and I believe with a little support from
> Python this could be avoided.  virtualenv can continue to exist to support
> the equivalent workflows on earlier versions of Python, but it would not
> exist (or would become much much simpler) on further Python versions.
> The specific parts of virtualenv that are a hack that I would like to
> replace with built-in functionality:
> * I'd rather ~/env/bin/python be a symlink instead of copying it.
> * I'd rather not copy (or symlink) *any* of the standard library.
> * I'd rather site.py support this functionality natively (and in turn that
> OS packagers support this when they make other modifications)
> * Compiling extensions can be tricky because code may not find headers
> (because they are installed in /usr, not ~/env/).  I think this can be
> handled better if virtualenv is slightly less intrusive, or distutils is
> patched, or generally tools are more aware of this layout.
> * This gets more complicated with a Mac framework build of Python, and
> hopefully those hacks could go away too.
> I am not sure what the best way to do this is, but I will offer at least one
> suggestion (other suggestions welcome):
> In my (proto-)proposal, a new binary pythonv is created.  This is slightly
> like pythonw.exe, which provides a Python interpreter on Windows which
> doesn't open a new window.  This binary is primarily for creating new
> environments.  It doesn't even need to be on $PATH, so it would be largely
> invisible to people unless they use it.
> If you symlink pythonv to a new location, it will effect sys.prefix
> (currently sys.prefix is calculated after dereferencing the symlink).
> Additionally, the binary will look for a configuration file.  I'm not sure
> where this file should go; perhaps directly alongside the binary, or in some
> location based on sys.prefix.
> The configuration file would be a simple set of assignments; some I might
> imagine:
> * Maybe override sys.prefix
> * Control if the global site-packages is placed on sys.path
> * On some operating systems there are other locations for packages installed
> with the system packager; probably these should be possible to enable or
> disable
> * Maybe control installations or point to a file like distutils.cfg
> I got some feedback from the Debian/Ubuntu maintainer that he would like
> functionality that might be like this; for instance, if you have
> /usr/bin/python2.6 and /usr/bin/python2.6-dbg, he'd like them to work
> slightly different (e.g., /usr/bin/python2.6-dbg would look in a different
> place for libraries).  So the configuration file location should be based on
> sys.prefix *and* the name of the binary itself (e.g.,
> /usr/lib/python2.6/python-config-dbg.conf).  I have no strong opinion on the
> location of the file itself, only that it can be specific to the directory
> and name of the interpreter.
> In addition to all this, I think sys would grow another prefixy value, e.g.,
> sys.build_prefix, that points to the place where Python was actually built
> (virtualenv calls this sys.real_prefix, but that's not a very good name).
>  Some code, especially in distutils, might need to be aware of this to
> compile extensions properly (we can be somewhat aware of these cases by
> looking at places where virtualenv already has problems compiling
> extensions).
> Some people have argued for something like sys.prefixes, a list of locations
> you might look at, which would allow a kind of nesting of these environments
> (where sys.prefixes[-1] == sys.prefix; or maybe reversed).  Personally this
> seems like it would be hard to keep mental track of this, but I can
> understand the purpose -- you could for instance create a kind of template
> prefix that has *most* of what you want installed in it, then create
> sub-environments that contain for instance an actual application, or a
> checkout (to test just one new piece of code).
> I'm not sure how this should best work on Windows (without symlinks, and
> where things generally work differently), but I would hope if this idea is
> more visible that someone more opinionated than I would propose the
> appropriate analog on Windows.
>
> --
> Ian Bicking  |  http://blog.ianbicking.org  |  http://twitter.com/ianbicking
>
> _______________________________________________
> Python-Dev mailing list
> Python-Dev at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
> Unsubscribe:
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/guido%40python.org
>
>



-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)