deactivate conflict in virtualenvwapper and anaconda

Question

I\'m using virtualenv to switch my python dev env. But when I run workon my_env, I meet such error message:

Error: deactivate must be sourced. R         


        

Answer 1

In anaconda activate is an executable script located in the anaconda bin directory, but is a function in in virtualenvwrapper.sh. So this is sort of a namespace collision problem, but also a case of overlap in functionality.

Anacondas is a python distribution and – among many other things – has support for dealing with virtual environment via conda env while the virtualenvwrapper is focused on working with different virtual environments. Just renaming the anaconda/bin/activate script is a brittle solution and may break conda.

The code of virtualenvwrapper.sh (function workon) executes deactivate which happens to use the anaconda script. This script returns an error. The workon code then goes on and removes the deactivate name and sources its own deactivate and also creates a deactivate function on the fly.

In summary, it does the right thing and the "error" can be viewed more as a warning. If you want to make it go away you can modify the workon function (search for the line # Deactivate any current environment "destructively")

deactivate
-->
deactivate >/dev/null 2>&1

(I have suggested this change to the virtualenvwrapper maintainer)