How to Use the Same Python Virtualenv on Both Windows and Linux

How to use the same Python virtualenv on both Windows and Linux

Short answer, NO. But you can share the venv build scripts.

  1. pip freeze all libraries to a requirements.txt file.

    pip freeze > requirements.txt
  2. Create the venv on each OS:

    python -m venv env
    source env/bin/activate
    pip install -r requirements.txt # Install all the libs.

There are several reasons why venvs cannot be shared across OSes:

  1. Some packages contains C extensions, and the OS' .dlls are not compatible with each other.
  2. venvs contain scripts with hardcoded paths. Windows and Linux paths are different.

Use (Linux) virtualenv from Windows

Just ssh into the vm.
Honestly I think the best solution would be to just fullscreen the vm and do it all in there, but that's just me.

Cross platform interface for virtualenv

Unless you use some Windows specific libraries; or an alternate Python implementation (like IronPython), there is nothing to worry about.

Many people (including myself) use Windows for development and deploy on Linux for production and use virtualenv for this purpose. It is designed to make your environment portable.

You don't push the entire virtualenv to Linux.

Once you have your virtual environment ready and your code is working, you should freeze the requirements for your application:

pip freeze > requirements.txt

In your target operating system; create an empty virtual environment:

virtualenv --no-site-packages prod_env

In recent versions of virtualenv, --no-site-packages is the default.

Next, populate the environment with your requirements file from development:

source prod_env/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

When you have a requirements change, simply regenerate the requirements.txt file and run pip install -r requirements.txt in production.

In some situations, your production systems don't have access to the Internet to download packages so the pip install trick doesn't work. For these scenarios you can create your own private pypi server and push your packages there. Added bonus going via this route is that you can create and push private packages and install them using the normal setuptools utilities.

Once you have decided on which process works for you - you then automate it in your deployment scripts; generally with hooks into your source code management system. Some people prefer a separate release engineering process (with a release manager - that is a person, not a program).

python virtual env succesfully activated via WSL but not working

Short answer: It's highly recommended to use the Linux version of Python and tools when in WSL. You'll find a number of posts here on Stack Overflow related to this, but your question is different enough (regarding venv) that it deserves its own answer.

More Detail:

Also worth reading this question. In that case, the question was around a dual-boot system and whether or not the same venv could be shared between Windows and Linux.

I know it seems like things might be better on WSL, where you can run Windows .executables under Linux, but it really isn't for this particular case.

You've solved the first problem, in the difference in line endings, but the next problem that you are facing is the difference in the directory format. After sourcing activate, do an echo $PATH and you'll see that the Windows style C:\path\to\the\venv path has been prepended to your PATH. For WSL, that would need to be /mnt/c/path/to/the/venv.

That's not going to work.

Once you fix that (again, by editing activate), you are still trying to run python3. The venv executable is actually python.exe. Under WSL, you do have to specify the extension.

So if you:

  1. Change the line-endings from CRLF to LF
  2. Change the path style in activate from Windows to WSL2 format
  3. Use the python.exe executable

Then you can at least launch the Windows Python version. Your import sys; sys.path will show the Windows paths.

That said, you are almost certainly going to run into additional problems that don't make it worth doing this. For instance, if a script assumes python or python3, or even pip; then those are going to fail because it needs to call, e.g., pip.exe.

Line endings and native code will also be a problem.

For these reasons (and likely more), it's highly recommended to use the Linux version of Python when in WSL.

How to use python virtual environment in another computer

You should not. The other computer can have a different operating system, other packages or package versions installed, so copying the files will not work.

The point of a virtual environment is to be able to replicate it everywhere you need it.

Make a script which installs all necessary dependencies from a requirements.txt file and use it.

Use pip freeze > requirements.txt to get the list of all python packages installed. Then install the dependencies in another virtual environment on another computer using pip install -r requirements.txt.

If you want the exact environment, including system packages, on another computer, use Docker.

How to use pycharm venv at cross-platform (at linux - windows etc..)?

There is no way to do this simply because windows executables will not run on linux, just make sure you have a requirements.txt file. Additionally, you'll run into other problems where venv bin scripts have improper #! lines if copy the venv.

Use different Python version with virtualenv

NOTE: For Python 3.3+, see The Aelfinn's answer below.


Use the --python (or short -p) option when creating a virtualenv instance to specify the Python executable you want to use, e.g.:

virtualenv --python="/usr/bin/python2.6" "/path/to/new/virtualenv/"


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