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pythonvirtualenvpipproduction-environment

Use virtualenv in production without python-dev

I have a python web project and I use virtualenv with pip on my dev server. Some python packages require compilation, so I should have python-dev in order to pip install them. Is there a way to reproduce my requirements stack in production keeping virtualenv, but no python-dev, as I am dealing with no dev server ?

Solution

  • pip 1.4 added support for installing and building wheel package.

    "Wheel" is a built, archive format that can greatly speed installation compared to building and installing from source archives.

    procedure

    1. Install/upgrade to pip 1.4. (one time only)

    2. Install wheel in both dev, production server. (one time only)

      pip install wheel

    3. Build wheel package in dev server:

      pip wheel --wheel-dir=/local/wheels -r requirements.txt

    4. Transfer /local/wheels packages to production server.

    5. Install packages in production server:

      pip install --use-wheel --no-index --find-links=/local/wheels -r requirements.txt

    Reference

    See pip documentation about building and installing wheels for more detail.