Original question:
I am installing virtualenvwrapper on Ubuntu 18.04. Here is what I have tried so far:
$ pip install virtualenvwrapper
...
$ export WORKON_HOME=~/Envs
$ mkdir -p $WORKON_HOME
$ source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
Error: bash: /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh: No such file or directory
Ok, so I went looking for virtualenvwrapper.sh. Eventually I found it:
joanna@joanna-X441BA:~/.local/bin$ ls
...
virtualenv-clone
virtualenvwrapper_lazy.sh
virtualenvwrapper.sh
...
Tried again with the new path: joanna@joanna-X441BA:/$ source /home/.local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
bash: /home/.local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh: No such file or directory
Agh, ok. Searched StackOverflow, followed the instructions in Issue installing Virtualenvwrapper on Ubuntu 18.04?:
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenv
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_LOG_DIR="$WORKON_HOME"
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_HOOK_DIR="$WORKON_HOME"
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3
I checked that this is in fact where my python3 installation lives. Same result though - No such file or directory.
Also tried sudo apt-get update and it successfully updated a bunch of stuff. But still No such file or directory.
Following this article, I also tried
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/local/bin/python
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV=/usr/local/bin/virtualenv
(with the paths corrected for my filesystem setup.)
I don't understand why Bash is saying "No such file or directory" when it is in fact there (inexact error message that could be improved?), or more importantly how to fix this problem.
Note: This article warns me not to use sudo with pip because "If you think you need to use sudo, you're probably trying to modify a distribution-owned file", which is apparently Very Bad. I have also seen several articles warning that I should really use python -m pip install (or python3 -m pip install?) instead of plain pip install, because plain pip install can cause unintended side effects. I am not an expert by any means in these matters, but avoiding side effects sounds good to me.
Solution:
I finally got it to work! I kept playing around with it and double-checking that all the paths were correct and I did everything in the right order. I also had a stray installation of Python 3.8 that it seems I had installed in one of my folders that I use for code (my understanding is that Python installations should automatically go into one of the root folders like /usr/bin). On advice from my mentor I used the file manager to delete the stray Python 3.8, which may have helped with the virtualenvwrapper problem. After deleting the stray Python 3.8 I ran these commands and it finally worked!!!!
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenv
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_LOG_DIR="$WORKON_HOME"
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_HOOK_DIR="$WORKON_HOME"
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3
source ~/.local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
My advice to readers of this question who are stumped with similar problems: triple-check the paths you are using by cd-ing into the folders, and also check for spelling errors in what you are typing. Your computer's file system may be set up slightly different from mine so don't blindly copy-paste the file paths I used. This will save you a lot of time and frustration. Also note that the file location of ~ is NOT the same as /home, that's one mistake I made.
