virtualenv sensitive to unnormalized python paths

[ianb]

If you install a package globally with easy_install, then create a virtualenv, sys.path will be sensitive to how you invoke the virtualenv Python interpreter.

A rough way to reproduce:

$ /usr/bin/easy_install SomePackage
$ virtualenv test-env
$ ./test-env/bin/python -c 'import sys, pprint; pprint.pprint(sys.path)' > normal-path.txt
$ ./test-env/../test-env/bin/python -c 'import sys, pprint; pprint.pprint(sys.path)' > unnormal-path.txt
$ diff -u normal-path.txt unnormal-path.txt

You should see that /usr/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/SomePackage-X.Y.egg appears in different locations on sys.path depending on how the Python interpreter is invoked. In practice this can mean the global egg does or does not override the local egg depending on the invocation.

Note: this has only been reproduced on two different Ubuntu systems, I'm not sure about other platforms.

[sunshowers]

If anybody else hits this issue, one workaround (if you don't care about any site packages) is to use --no-site-packages to set up the virtualenv.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Just add a comment if you want to keep it open. Thank you for your contributions.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Just add a comment if you want to keep it open. Thank you for your contributions.

[gaborbernat]

This is becoming obsolete with #1366 now in full swing.