How to use virtualenv in makefile

Question

I want to perform several operations while working on a specified virtualenv.

For example command

make install

would be equivalent

Answer 1

Normally make runs every command in a recipe in a different subshell. However, setting .ONESHELL: will run all the commands in a recipe in the same subshell, allowing you to activate a virtualenv and then run commands inside it.

Note that .ONESHELL: applies to the whole Makefile, not just a single recipe. It may change behaviour of existing commands, details of possible errors in the full documentation. This will not let you activate a virtualenv for use outside the Makefile, since the commands are still run inside a subshell.

Reference documentation: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/One-Shell.html

Example:

.ONESHELL:

.PHONY: install
install:
    source path/to/virtualenv/bin/activate
    pip install -r requirements.txt