Control the pip version in virtualenv

python pip virtualenv python-wheel python-venv
wim picture wim · Jan 13, 2014 · Viewed 19.8k times · Source

How do I control the version of pip which is used in a freshly created venv?

By default, it uses a vendored pip distribution which may be out of date or unsuitable for whatever other reason. I want to be able to create a venv with a user-specified version of pip installed initially, as opposed to creating one and then upgrading the pip installation from within the env.

Answer

Sam Hartsfield picture Sam Hartsfield · Jan 13, 2014

From reading the source of virtualenv, it looks like pip is installed from a source tarfile included with virtualenv. In virtualenv 1.10.1, it is pip-1.4.1.tar.gz in the site-packages/virtualenv_support directory (it gets setuptools from the same place). You could feasibly replace that archive to control the version; virtualenv.py, at least the version I have, doesn't care which version of pip is there:

    if not no_pip:
        install_sdist('Pip', 'pip-*.tar.gz', py_executable, search_dirs)

You could also pass the --no-pip option and then install the version you want from source.

In virtualenv 1.11, it looks for a wheel file (e.g. pip-*.whl) instead of a tar.gz, but other than that it acts the same way (thanks @wim for the update).

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