virtualenvwrapper

Note:

This is Linux only! For Windows see envdotpy (link below).
In these examples, I am using the folder ~/.virtualenvs for my development environment.

Install

Create a folder to store your virtual environments:

mkdir ~/.virtualenvs

Edit .bashrc and add the following:

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

To always use virtualenvwrapper with python 3, add the following option to ~/.bashrc:

export VIRTUALENV_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3

Source the ~/.bashrc:

source ~/.bashrc

Run the workon command to list the virtual environments (will be empty for now).

Create a new virtual environment:

mkvirtualenv temp

To use python3:

mkvirtualenv --python=/usr/bin/python3 temp

To use python2:

mkvirtualenv -p /usr/bin/python temp

Run the workon command to list the virtual environments:

workon

Using the above temp environment as an example…

Edit the postactivate script for the virtual environment (in this case temp):

gvim ~/.virtualenvs/temp/bin/postactivate

Here is a sample script setting a couple of environment variables:

PATH=~/env/patkimber:$PATH
JAVA_HOME=~/temp/pat_java
export JAVA_HOME

Activate the environment:

workon temp