tripleee / virtualdeb

Download library deb files into a virtualenv

virtualdeb

This is an experimental and very crude hack which attempts to help you resolve (a subset of) binary library dependencies in a virtualenv on Debian-based distros.

The code assumes you have a Python virtualenv already set up, and that $VIRTUAL_ENV points to it (as it will if you have activated it). Alternatively, if $VIRTUAL_ENV is unset, the first command-line argument should be the path to the virtualenv root.

This program downloads each named package as well as dependent packages as deb files into the virtualenv and makes sure any files in them within lib or usr/lib are in a directory on LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Merely copying libraries into a directory in LD_LIBRARY_PATH is obviously only viable for extremely simple libraries. If the deb package contains a postinst script or some other configuration actions, or contains code which hardcodes locations in the /usr file system, for example, this will obviously fail.

See also stackoverflow.com/.../shared-library-in-a-virtualenv-on-debian-pip-install-fails