Ansible in a venv

Ansible in a venv

‘venv’ is the Python system for setting up virtual environments. The tool you need to use to manage this is ‘virtualenv’.

# install virtualenv
pip install virtualenv

# create a virtualenv named venv
virtualenv venv

# create venv using Python 2.7
virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python2.7 venv

# activate the venv
source venv/bin/activate

# install things
pip install ansible
pip install -r requirements.txt

# switch off the virtual environment
deactivate

virtualenvwrapper

An extension to virtualenv is virtualenvwrapper, which adds some helpful commands and management functions to deal with multiple venvs stored in a central location (by default they are located in  /.virtualenvs).

# install...
pip install virtualenvwrapper

# ...and make the commands available
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

# set up a new environment
mkvirtualenv venv

# switch to 'venv'
workon venv

# make a whole project in $PROJECT_HOME
mkproject myproject

# shut down the current venv
deactivate

# delete 'venv'
rmvirtualenv venv

‘virtualenvwrapper’ is worth using just for the central storage outside of project files, and for the ability to quickly switch environments.