Webfaction, virtualenv and --no-site-packages

So I thought I had finally figured out how I wanted to configure my code on webfaction using env. My plan involved using the flag --no-site-packages.

Once I created the virtualenv, I fired up python and ran the code:

import sys

for x in sys.path:

print x

Much to my surprise, all "my site packages" (/username/lib/python2.5 ) paths were in the system path. I was hoping these packages would not be included.

This post on the webfaction forum explained what was happening. Basically the --no-site-packages flag removes the ones installed by webfaction for all users.

Next, I tried to setup the paths using a sitecustomize.py file. When python starts, it looks for that file. If it finds it, it imports it. Unfortunately that did not work either because webfaction already has one in /usr/local/lib/python2.5.

I tried adding an import statement to a .pth file. That solution did not work because there is no guarantee of when that file will be executed relative to the other .pth files. In my case, it ran before the paths I wanted to remove from sys.path.

For now, here's my soln. The only project I have running in virtualenv is django. I am just going to add an import statement in manage.py. It will configure the site path. On my development computer, I am not having all these problems. So I will put the import statement in a try block. If the config program is not found, it will just move on.