I am looking into using Canopy Express as an IDE. My understanding is that it uses a backport of venv from Python 3 to manage user-generated virtual environments, in addition to being a virtual environment unto itself. I just want to verify that within any virtual environments I create in Canopy, I will be able to install project-specific packages not included in the Express distribution using easy_install/pip as described here. That last link doesn't explicitly say that such package management works in a user-created virtual environment, hence my uncertainty.
Put simply, what I want is (assuming all my projects are 2.7-based) to install Canopy Express once and use it as my default Python. Then for various projects requiring packages that Express doesn't include, I can create separate virtual environments and install such packages on an as-needed basis.
If I can't do this, the other alternative I see is to install Canopy Express in virtualenv environments on an as-needed basis, and then to use those environment's pips to install extra packages.
Any thoughts?
Yes, you just need to install setuptools and pip into your venv. If you use the -s/--system-site-packages option, you can inherit these from Canopy's installation (you may need to manually install the pip package using the package manager before making your venv). Appropriately-modified copies of the easy_install and pip scripts will be installed into your venv and will install into your venv's site-packages.