Virtualenv is an awesome tool for Python development. To ease the development process there is the virtualenvwrapper: a wrapper that allows you access the your virtualenv shell commands.
However, even with this all easies a problem arises when we deploy our code:
How to activate the virtualenv automatically?
The answer is: using the activate_this.py script.
We can find it on path:
~/.virtualenvs/<your virtualenv>/bin/activate_this.py
The script aims to activate the virtualenv python from “outside”. So, your environment will have access to the necessary libs to run your application.
Look ma: no hands…!
To use the script put the following code lines in the file that starts your app.
If your app runs on cli (command line app) like a *nix daemon, you put the code line on your file that start your app. In case your app is a web application, then, you put the code on “*wsgi.py” – the file that is used by your webserver.
activate_this = '/path/to/env/bin/activate_this.py' execfile(activate_this, dict(__file__=activate_this))
Note that lines above should be put on the first lines of the code.
After this, restart your service or your webserver.
Done! Your virtualenv will be started automatically ;-)
Read more:
Virtualenvwrapper – Read the docs: https://virtualenvwrapper.readthedocs.io/en/latest/