I'm using virtualenv and the virtualenvwrapper. I can switch between virtualenv's just fine using the workon command.
me@mymachine:~$ workon env1
(env1)me@mymachine:~$ workon env2
(env2)me@mymachine:~$ workon env1
(env1)me@mymachine:~$
How do I exit all virtual environments and work on my system environment again? Right now, the only way I have of getting back to me@mymachine:~$ is to exit the shell and start a new one. That's kind of annoying. Is there a command to work on "nothing", and if so, what is it? If such a command does not exist, how would I go about creating it?
13 Answers
Usually, activating a virtualenv gives you a shell function named:
$ deactivate
which puts things back to normal.
I have just looked specifically again at the code for virtualenvwrapper, and, yes, it too supports deactivate as the way to escape from all virtualenvs.
If you are trying to leave an Anaconda environment, the command depends upon your version of conda. Recent versions (like 4.6) install a conda function directly in your shell, in which case you run:
conda deactivate
Older conda versions instead implement deactivation using a stand-alone script:
source deactivate
Use:
$ deactivate
If this doesn't work, try
$ source deactivate
Anyone who knows how Bash source works will think that's odd, but some wrappers/workflows around virtualenv implement it as a complement/counterpart to source activate. Your mileage may vary.
I defined an alias, workoff, as the opposite of workon:
alias workoff='deactivate'
It is easy to remember:
[bobstein@host ~]$ workon django_project
(django_project)[bobstein@host ~]$ workoff
[bobstein@host ~]$
To activate a Python virtual environment:
$cd ~/python-venv/
$./bin/activate
To deactivate:
$deactivate
I found that when within a Miniconda3 environment I had to run:
conda deactivate
Neither deactivate nor source deactivate worked for me.
You can use virtualenvwrapper in order to ease the way you work with virtualenv.
Installing virtualenvwrapper:
pip install virtualenvwrapper
If you are using a standard shell, open your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc if you use Oh My Zsh. Add these two lines:
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
To activate an existing virtualenv, use command workon:
$ workon myenv
(myenv)$
In order to deactivate your virtualenv:
(myenv)$ deactivate
Here is my tutorial, step by step on how to install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper.
Using the deactivate feature provided by the venv's activate script requires you to trust the deactivation function to be properly coded to cleanly reset all environment variables back to how they were before— taking into account not only the original activation, but also any switches, configuration, or other work you may have done in the meantime.
It's probably fine, but it does introduce a new, non-zero risk of leaving your environment modified afterwards.
However, it's not technically possible for a process to directly alter the environment variables of its parent, so we can use a separate sub-shell to be absolutely sure our venvs don't leave any residual changes behind:
To activate:
$ bash --init-file PythonVenv/bin/activate
- This starts a new shell around the
venv. Your originalbashshell remains unmodified.
