How to force virtualenv to install latest setuptools and pip from pypi?

python virtualenv pip setuptools virtualenvwrapper
cdwilson picture cdwilson · Jun 17, 2013 · Viewed 15.4k times · Source

Is it possible to force virtualenv to use the latest setuptools and pip available from pypi? Essentially, I'm looking for the opposite of the --never-download flag.

Currently, when I make a new virtualenv, it uses the local (old) versions that come bundled with virtualenv.

$ v.mk testvenv
New python executable in testvenv/bin/python
Installing setuptools............done.
Installing pip...............done.
$ pip show setuptools
---
Name: setuptools
Version: 0.6c11
Location: /Users/cwilson/.virtualenvs/testvenv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
Requires: 
$ pip search setuptools
[...]
setuptools                - Easily download, build, install, upgrade, and
                            uninstall Python packages
INSTALLED: 0.6c11
LATEST:    0.7.2
[...]

Answer

cdwilson picture cdwilson · Jun 17, 2013

It's not supported for security reasons.

Using virtualenv.py as an isolated script (i.e. without an associated virtualenv_support directory) is no longer supported for security reasons and will fail with an error. Along with this, --never-download is now always pinned to True, and is only being maintained in the short term for backward compatibility (Pull #412).

I can't use the --extra-search-dir option either because it's currently broken https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/issues/327

Looks like the only option is to simply wait for the virtualenv maintainers to update the bundled packages?

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