Creating a virtualenv with Anaconda's Python version

Question

An error when creating a virtualenv which uses a Python version different than the default Python of the machine, while Anaconda is installed on the machine. I created a new virtual environment:

virtualenv --no-site-packages ~/graphlabcreate
source ~/graphlabcreate/bin/activate

That created a directory with the machine default python2.6 while I need python2.7. Then, I read here and tried:

virtualenv -p /usr/local/anaconda/bin/python2.7 ~/graphlabcreate

And received the following error:

Running virtualenv with interpreter /usr/local/anaconda/bin/python2.7
New python executable in /home/nancy/graphlabcreate/bin/python2.7
Not overwriting existing python script /home/nancy/graphlabcreate/bin/python (you must use /home/nancy/graphlabcreate/bin/python2.7)
/home/nancy/graphlabcreate/bin/python2.7: error while loading shared libraries: libpython2.7.so.1.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
ERROR: The executable /home/nancy/graphlabcreate/bin/python2.7 is not functioning
ERROR: It thinks sys.prefix is u'/' (should be u'/home/nancy/graphlabcreate')
ERROR: virtualenv is not compatible with this system or executable

same happens when I run:

virtualenv -p  /usr/local/anaconda/bin/python2.7  --no-site-packages ~/graphlabcreate

EDIT:

$ ls -ltr /usr/bin/pyth*
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 1418 2013-11-21 17:51 /usr/bin/python2.6-config*
-rwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 9032 2013-11-21 17:53 /usr/bin/python2.6*
-rwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 9032 2013-11-21 17:53 /usr/bin/python*
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root    6 2014-07-15 12:51 /usr/bin/python2 -> python*
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   16 2014-07-15 12:56 /usr/bin/python-config -> python2.6-config*

 $ ls -ltr /usr/local/anaconda/bin/pyth*
    -rwxr-xr-x. 3 root root  9032 2013-11-21 17:53 /usr/local/anaconda/bin/python*
    -rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 10222 2014-06-02 20:35 /usr/local/anaconda/bin/python2.7*
    -rwxrwxr-x. 1 root root  1602 2014-07-16 17:21 /usr/local/anaconda/bin/python-argcomplete-check-easy-install-script*
    lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root     9 2014-07-16 17:21 /usr/local/anaconda/bin/python2 -> python2.7*
    -rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  1680 2014-07-16 17:21 /usr/local/anaconda/bin/python-config*

Answer 1

If you are using Anaconda, you can use conda to create environments rather than virtualenv, using the conda create command.