Setting up virtualenv Getting virtualenv to work

05 December 2017

This tutorial describes how to setup virtualenv on ecelinux. If your are installing it in another environment, skip up to Creating virtualenv step.

ECE Linux Machines

There are 8 linux machines available: ecelinux[1-8].uwaterloo.ca. The instructions have been tested on the newer machines ecelinux[1-3].uwaterloo.ca. Please use those machines only.

Switching shell to bash

Check your current shell

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/csh

If the current shell is /bin/csh, switch it to bash using the web interface here. See the bottom of the page under the heading Unix Shell Change.

# replace USER with your watiam id
$ ssh USER@ecelinux.uwaterloo.ca
$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash

Install pip

Detailed instructions are available at https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing

$ wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
$ python get-pip.py --user
Collecting pip
  Using cached pip-9.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting wheel
  Using cached wheel-0.29.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: pip, wheel
Successfully installed pip-9.0.1 wheel-0.29.0
$ export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH

Install virtualenv via pip

$ pip install virtualenv --user
Collecting virtualenv
  Using cached virtualenv-15.1.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: virtualenv
Successfully installed virtualenv-15.1.0

Create virtualenv space for the course

Detailed instructions are available at http://docs.python-guide.org/en/latest/dev/virtualenvs

$ mkdir ece653
$ cd ece653
$ virtualenv venv

Activate virtualenv (this needs to be done at every login to use the environment)

$ source ./venv/bin/activate
(venv) [user@ecelinux ece653]$

Install required packages

Install grako, coverage, ipython, and z3-solver. Installation of ipython and z3-solver might take a while.

$ source ./venv/bin/activate
$ pip install grako
$ pip install coverage
# Optional, but convenient way to interact with python
$ pip install ipython
# Not needed for Assignment 1
$ pip install z3-solver

To de-active the environment

(venv) [user@ecelinux ece653]$ deactivate

To activate and deactivate virtualenv during each login session

$ source ./venv/bin/activate
(venv) $ coverage --help
(venv) $ deactivate
$

After virtualenv is activated you should be able to use python, coverage, ipython, and other python commands as usual.