How to get mod_wsgi to pick up my virtualenv

Question

I'm very new to working with Flask-

according to http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.12/deploying/mod_wsgi/

under the heading "Working with Virtual Environments" I read:

For Python 3 add the following lines to the top of your .wsgi file:

activate_this = '/path/to/env/bin/activate_this.py'
with open(activate_this) as file_:
    exec(file_.read(), dict(__file__=activate_this)) This sets up the load paths according to the settings of the virtual environment.

Keep in mind that the path has to be absolute.

to activate my venv I use the command from linux:

 my_env/bin/activate

I looked in my my_env/bin/ directory and do not see any .py files. Am I suppose to create a .py file that in my_env/bin/ that will be called by the .wsgi file?

Answer 1

The best and cleanest way I've found without doing some “kind of magic” with obscure scripts is to simply begin the .wsgi with the reference to the python interpreter that lies within the environment. Just start your .wsgi with this, and no need to fiddle after that:

#!/path/to/your/venv/bin/python

I wish I thought about this straightforward solution before unsuccessfully spending hours on this - and wish someone else had mentioned it.

Answer 2

I was having the same issue, the solution is actually quite simple. You need to install libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3 instead of libapache2-mod-wsgi. The latter is for python 2.

You can then activate your environment by adding the environment's site-packages to the system path. For example, for me (using venv) I can do this by adding the following line to my *.wgsi file.

sys.path.insert(0,"/path/to/venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages")