Can I install Python windows packages into virtualenvs?

python windows virtualenv
Ned Batchelder picture Ned Batchelder · Jul 17, 2010 · Viewed 31.6k times · Source

Virtualenv is great: it lets me keep a number of distinct Python installations so that different projects' dependencies aren't all thrown together into a common pile.

But if I want to install a package on Windows that's packaged as a .exe installer, how can I direct it to install into the virtualenv? For example, I have pycuda-0.94rc.win32-py2.6.exe. When I run it, it examines the registry, and finds only one Python26 to install into, the common one that my virtualenv is based off of.

How can I direct it to install into the virtualenv?

Answer

Piotr Dobrogost picture Piotr Dobrogost · Mar 26, 2011

Yes, you can. All you need is

easy_install binary_installer_built_with_distutils.exe

Surprised? It looks like binary installers for Windows made with distutils combine .exe with .zip into one .exe file. Change extension to .zip to see it's a valid zip file. I discovered this after reading answers to my question Where can I download binary eggs with psycopg2 for Windows?

UPDATE

As noted by Tritium21 in his answer nowadays you should use pip instead of easy_install. Pip can't install binary packages created by distutils but it can install binary packages in the new wheel format. You can convert from old format to the new one using wheel package, which you have to install first.

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