How do I install wxPython in virtualenv

Question

I'm on a Mac OSX Lion machine, and I've downloaded wxPython-src-2.9.3.1.tar.bz2. I then did the following (note: output messages have been removed):

$ tar -xjf wxPython-src-2.9.3.1.tar.bz2
$ cd wxPython-src-2.9.3.1
$ mkdir bld
$ cd bld
$ source /path/to/myvirtualenv/bin/activate
(myvirtualenv)$ cross_compiling=yes
(myvirtualenv)$ export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.6.7
(myvirtualenv)$ set arch_flags="-arch ppc64 "
(myvirtualenv)$ ../configure \
--with-mac --enable-monolithic --enable-threads --enable-unicode \
--enable-debug_flag --enable-debug \
--with-libpng --with-libjpeg --with-libtiff --enable-unicode \
--with-opengl --enable-graphics_ctx --with-odbc --enable-gui \
--with-macosx-sdk=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk --with-macosx-version-min=10.6 \
CFLAGS="$arch_flags" CXXFLAGS="$arch_flags" CPPFLAGS="$arch_flags" LDFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCXXFLAGS="$arch_flags" --prefix=/path/to/myvirtualenv/
$ (myvirtualenv)make
$ (myvirtualenv)make install

After that, I did get this message (so I guess it succeeded):

...
 ------------------------------------------------------

 The installation of wxWidgets is finished.  On certain
 platforms (e.g. Linux) you'll now have to run ldconfig
 if you installed a shared library and also modify the
 LD_LIBRARY_PATH (or equivalent) environment variable.

 wxWidgets comes with no guarantees and doesn't claim
 to be suitable for any purpose.

 Read the wxWindows Licence on licencing conditions.

 ------------------------------------------------------

And returned me to my shell. However, I cannot seem to use it

(myvirtualenv)$ python
>>> import wxversion
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named wxversion

Any ideas how I can have it installed in my virtualenv?

Answer 1

For others, here is what worked for me:

On Mac OSX, I installed wxpython with Homebrew using:

brew install wxpython

Change into your virtualenv site-packages directory:

cd /venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages

then link the wx.pth

ln -s /usr/local/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wx.pth wx.pth

and then link the wx-3.0-osx_cocoa directory:

ln -s /usr/local/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wx-3.0-osx_cocoa wx-3.0-osx_cocoa

Answer 2

after reading through all the above articles, this is the real key:

you need to point your VE at the main python installation.

On my system its:

% ln /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/wxredirect.pth ./default/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wxredirect.pth

Answer 3

For Windows, you can use the same approach that cweston outlined for OS X, translated to calls to mklink. I had success creating a virtualenv for an old Python 2.7 / WxPython 2.8 based app by doing the following:

Install WxPython using the installer.

Find the site-packages directory where WxPython was installed. For me,

C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages

Open a shell and change to the site-packages directory inside the virtualenv to which you want to add WxPython, say it's called WxApp:

cmd
cd C:\Virtualenvs\WxApp\Lib\site-packages

Then create links: hard links for wx.pth and wxversion.py, and a junction for the directory containing the WxPython installation (mine was wx-2.8-msw-unicode):

mklink /h wx.pth C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\wx.pth
mklink /h wxversion.py C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\wxversion.py
mklink /j wx-2.8-msw-unicode C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\wx-2.8-msw-unicode\

Now I have access to the wx module:

C:\> C:\VirtualEnvs\WxApp\scripts\activate.bat
(WxApp) C:\>python
ActivePython 2.7.2.5 (ActiveState Software Inc.) based on Python 2.7.2 (default, Jun 24 2011, 12:21:10) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import wx
>>> wx.version()
'2.8.12.1 (msw-unicode)'
>>>