Creating a new virtualenv results in an error.

Question

Hi,

I'm trying to get virtualenv to work on my machine. I'm using python2.6, and after installing pip, and using pip to install virtualenv, running "virtualenv --no-site-packages cyclesg" results in the following:

New python executable in cyclesg/bin/python
Installing setuptools....
  Complete output from command /home/nubela/Workspace/cyclesg...ython -c "#!python
\"\"\"Bootstrap setuptoo...




" /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packag...6.egg:
  error: invalid Python installation: unable to open /home/nubela/Workspace/cyclesg_dep/cyclesg/include/multiarch-i386-linux/python2.6/pyconfig.h (No such file or directory)
----------------------------------------
...Installing setuptools...done.
New python executable in cyclesg/bin/python
Installing setuptools....
  Complete output from command /home/nubela/Workspace/cyclesg...ython -c "#!python
\"\"\"Bootstrap setuptoo...




" /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packag...6.egg:
  error: invalid Python installation: unable to open /home/nubela/Workspace/cyclesg_dep/cyclesg/include/multiarch-i386-linux/python2.6/pyconfig.h (No such file or directory)
----------------------------------------
...Installing setuptools...done.

Any idea how I can remedy this? Thanks!

Answer 1

Are you on a linux based system? It looks like virtualenv is trying to build a new python exectable but can't find the files to do that. Try installing the python-dev package.

Answer 2

Are you on mandriva?

In order to support multilib (mixing x86/x86_64) Mandriva messes up your python installation. They patched python, which breaks virtualenv; instead of fixing python, they then proceeded to patch virtualenv. This is useless if you are using your own virtualenv installed from pip.

Here is the bug: https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=42808