python - how to copy modules from one virtualenv to another

Question

Is it possibe to copy python modules from one virtualenv to another.If so how is this done?

Answer 1

As long as you're moving them from one virtualenv to another on the same machine, you could easily just do:

$ cp -r [env1]/lib/pythonX.X/site-packages/* [env2]/lib/pythonX.X/site-packages/

However, if the environments are on different machines or utilizing different versions of python or some other major difference, it's probably not a good idea. In general it's much safer to generate a requirements.txt, and then use that to load up all the same modules in the other environment. You can create the file manually if you like, but it's easier to just use pip.

$ pip freeze -E [env1] > requirements.txt

Or, if your virtualenv is activated already, you can simply do:

$ pip freeze > requirements.txt

Then, in your other environment, you can do:

$ pip install -E [env2] -r /path/to/requirements.txt