Migrating virtualenv and Github between computers

Question

I primarily work these days with Python 2.7 and Django 1.3.3 (hosted on Heroku) and I have multiple projects that I maintain. I've been working on a Desktop with Ubuntu running inside of a VirtualBox, but recently had to take a trip and wanted to get everything loaded up on my notebook. But, what I quickly discovered was that virtualenv + Github is really easy for creating projects, but I struggled to try and get them moved over to my notebook. The approach that I sort of came up with was to create new virtualenv and then clone the code from github. But, I couldn't do it in the folder that I really wanted because it would say the folder is not empty. So, I would clone it to a tmp folder than them cut/paste the everthing into where I really wanted it. Not TERRIBLE, but I just feel like I'm missing something here and that it should be easier. Maybe clone first, then mkvirtualenv?

It's not a crushing problem, but I'm thinking about making some more changes (like getting ride of the VirtualBox and just going with a Dual boot system) and it would be great if I could make it a bit smoother. :)

Finally, I found and read a few posts about moving git repos between computers, but I didn't see any dealing with Virtualenv (maybe I just missed it).

EDIT: Just to be clear and avoid confusion, I'm not try to "move" the virtualenv. I'm just talking about best way to create a new one. Install the packages, and then clone the repo from github.

Answer 1

The only workflow you should need is:

git clone repo_url somedir
cd somedir
virtualenv <name of environment directory>
source <name of environment directory>/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

This assumes that you have run pip freeze > requirements.txt (while the venv is activated) to list all the virtualenv-pip-installed libraries and checked it into the repo.