Problems using nose in a virtualenv

Question

I am unable to use nose (nosetests) in a virtualenv project - it can't seem to find the packages installed in the virtualenv environment.

The odd thing is that i can set

test_suite = 'nose.collector'

in setup.py and run the tests just fine as

python setup.py test

but when running nosetests straight, there are all sorts of import errors.

I've tried it with both a system-wide installation of nose and a virtualenv nose package and no luck.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!!

On a related note, nose works fine "out of the box" on a different computer... so there's something wonky with the system I was having problems on. — Ryan, May 15 '09 at 17:07

score 63 · Answer 1 · answered May 07 '11 at 02:35

63

You need to have a copy of nose installed in the virtual environment. In order to force installation of nose into the virtualenv, even though it is already installed in the global site-packages, run pip install with the -I flag:

(env1)$ pip install nose -I

From then on you can just run nosetests as usual.

answered May 07 '11 at 02:35

edward

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It seems that one might have to refresh the virtualenv. Namely, `which nosetests` should point to an executable inside of the virtualenv. – Ceasar Jul 16 '13 at 05:52
20

+1 This is what worked for me. Also, as Ceasar points out, I also had to refresh the virtualenv by running `deactivate` and then reactivating. – Tom Oct 01 '13 at 16:31
1

After you use this command, then `deactivate`, then `workon ENV`, it seems you can then use ``python `which nosetests` ``. – David Gay Oct 15 '14 at 05:08
When `which nosetests` does not correctly point to the venv, check if you have installed `nose` or `nose2`, and note that `nose2` does not use the `nosetests` executable (but uses `nose2` instead). D-oh! – Joost Oct 19 '15 at 06:52

score 45 · Accepted Answer · answered May 14 '09 at 18:32

45

Are you able to run myenv/bin/python /usr/bin/nosetests? That should run Nose using the virtual environment's library set.

answered May 14 '09 at 18:32

John Millikin

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If using with scripts that other developers will use, you can do `python \`which nosetests\`` – bcoughlan May 15 '13 at 17:38
3

Try this alias nosetests='/usr/bin/env python $(which nosetests)' – Necrolyte2 Nov 20 '13 at 14:04

score 12 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 17 '13 at 21:54

12

In the same situation I needed to reload the virtualenv for the path to be correctly updated:

deactivate
env/bin/activate

answered Sep 17 '13 at 21:54

Andrea Zonca

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This is the one that did it for me. Any idea why you need to re-activate after installing nose (or nose2, in my case)? – hansmosh Mar 10 '16 at 20:10
@hansmosh, cannot test right now, it would be useful to check all the paths – Andrea Zonca Mar 14 '16 at 18:16
I had nose installed globally so the nosetests executable didn't resolve properly. the following worked: python `which nosetests` but this is the actual solution for me. – Steven Stip Mar 19 '19 at 16:48

score 9 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 23 '11 at 18:35

9

I got a similar problem. The following workaround helped:

python `which nosetests`

(instead of just nosestests)

answered Mar 23 '11 at 18:35

npinto

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Pavel Repin · Answer 5 · 2009-05-14T21:30:32.307

Here's what works for me:

$ virtualenv --no-site-packages env1
$ cd env1
$ source bin/activate            # makes "env1" environment active,
                                 # you will notice that the command prompt
                                 # now has the environment name in it.

(env1)$ easy_install nose        # install nose package into "env1"

I created a really basic package slither that had, in its setup.py, same test_suite attribute as you mentioned above. Then I placed the package source under env1/src.

If you looked inside env1/src, you'd see:

slither/setup.py
slither/slither/__init__.py
slither/slither/impl.py          # has some very silly code to be tested
slither/slither/tests.py         # has test-cases

I can run the tests using test subcommand:

(env1)$ pushd src/slither
(env1)$ python setup.py test
# ... output elided ...
test_ctor (slither.tests.SnakeTests) ... ok
test_division_by_zero (slither.tests.SnakeTests) ... ok
Ran 2 tests in 0.009s
OK
(env1)$ popd

Or, I can run the same tests with nosetests:

(env1)$ pushd src
(env1)$ nosetests slither/
..
Ran 2 tests in 0.007s
OK
(env1)$ popd

Also note that nosetests can be picky about executables. You can pass --exe if you want it to discover tests in python modules that are executable.

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 24 '13 at 00:51

1

If all else fails, try installing nose in your venv, and/or run nosetests-2.7. I believe @andrea-zonca's answer has the same effect if your venv python is 2.7

answered Sep 24 '13 at 00:51

eggonlegs

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jun 06 '13 at 17:18

You might have a nosetests that is installed somewhere else in your PATH with higher priority than the one installed in your virtualenv. A quick way to give the nose module and associated nosetests script installed in your current virtualenv top priority is to edit your PATH:

export PATH=/path/to/current/virtualenv/bin:$PATH

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 16 '21 at 18:21

0

Late to the party.

Regardless, if you see this in the year 2021... These issues, for me, surrounding nose, nose-cov and pinocchio were resolved by updating my Virtual Envs to at least Python 3.8.2..

answered Jan 16 '21 at 18:21

Jay Bose

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score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 07 '11 at 01:55

0

Perhaps this is a recent change, but for me, when I installed nosetests through pip, there was a nosetests executable installed in .virtualenvs/<env>/bin, which (unsurprisingly) operates correctly with the virtualenv.

answered Sep 07 '11 at 01:55

Josh Bleecher Snyder

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Problems using nose in a virtualenv

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