virtualenvwrapper wrapper

I'm running Arch linux on my laptop these days, and it defaults to python 3. Occasionally I have development work that still needs to happen in python 2. I like to use virtualenv, and also value the additional functionality added by virtualenvwrapper. But Arch doesn't include a package of virtualenvwrapper for python 2 (nor is this easily done). My workaround is to create a virtualenvwrapper wrapper.

First install both versions of virtualenv:

1. pacman -S python-virtualenv
2. pacman -S python2-virtualenv

Next, have a look at my previous post on isolating python environments in Arch. Once you've got that set up, you can pip2 install virtualenvwrapper to get the python 2 version installed under /usr/local.

Finally, create a simple wrapper script for python 2 in a convenient location (e.g. ~/bin/v2) with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON="$(which python2)"
VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV="$(which virtualenv2)"
. /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
"${@}"

Now you can use all of the normal virtualenvwrapper commands for python 2 by prefixing them with your wrapper script, e.g. v2 mkvirtualenv python2env. To use python 3, just call the virtualenvwrapper commands as normal, e.g. mkvirtualenv python3env.