Virtualenv uses wrong python, even though it is first in $PATH

Question

I had a problem where python was not finding modules installed by pip while in the virtualenv.

I have narrowed it down, and found that when I call python when my virtualenv in activated, it still reaches out to /usr/bin/python instead of /home/liam/dev/.virtualenvs/noots/bin/python.

When I use which python in the virtualenv I get:

/home/liam/dev/.virtualenvs/noots/bin/python

When I look up my $PATH variable in the virtualenv I get:

bash: /home/liam/dev/.virtualenvs/noots/bin:/home/liam/bin:/home/liam/.local/bin:/home/liam/bin:/home/liam/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin: No such file or directory

and yet when I actually run python it goes to /usr/bin/python

To make things more confusing to me, if I run python3.5 it grabs python3.5 from the correct directory (i.e. /home/liam/dev/.virtualenvs/noots/bin/python3.5)

I have not touched /home/liam/dev/.virtualenvs/noots/bin/ in anyway. python and python3.5 are still both linked to python3 in that directory. Traversing to /home/liam/dev/.virtualenvs/noots/bin/ and running ./python, ./python3 or ./python3.5 all work normally.

I am using virtualenvwrapper if that makes a difference, however the problem seemed to occur recently, long after install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper

Answer 1

My problem was that i recently moved my project with virtualenv to another location, due to this activate script had wrong VIRTUAL_ENV path.

$ cat path_to_your_env/bin/activate

... # some declarations

VIRTUAL_ENV="/path_to_your_env/bin/python"  # <-- THIS LINE
export VIRTUAL_ENV

... # some declarations

To fix this, just update VIRTUAL_ENV in activate script.

Also you maybe need to fix first line of your bin/pip to link to real python path.