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CLI interface
=============
.. _cli_flags:
CLI flags
~~~~~~~~~
``virtualenv`` is primarily a command line application.
It modifies the environment variables in a shell to create an isolated Python environment, so you'll need to have a
shell to run it. You can type in ``virtualenv`` (name of the application) followed by flags that control its
behaviour. All options have sensible defaults, so you'll get a working virtual environment in a ``venv`` folder even
if you don't pass any options. The default values for the command line options can be overridden via the
:ref:`conf_file` or :ref:`env_vars`. Environment variables takes priority over the configuration file values
(``--help`` will show if a default comes from the environment variable as the help message will end in this case
with environment variables or the configuration file).
The options that can be passed to virtualenv, along with their default values and a short description are listed below.
:command:`virtualenv [OPTIONS]`
.. table_cli::
:module: virtualenv.run
:func: build_parser
Defaults
~~~~~~~~
.. _conf_file:
Configuration file
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
virtualenv looks for a standard ini configuration file. The exact location depends on the operating system you're using,
as determined by :pypi:`appdirs` application data definition. The configuration file location is printed as at the end of
the output when ``--help`` is passed.
The keys of the settings are derived from the long command line option. For example, :option:`--python <python>`
would be specified as:
.. code-block:: ini
[virtualenv]
python = /opt/python-3.3/bin/python
Options that take multiple values, like :option:`extra-search-dir` can be specified as:
.. code-block:: ini
[virtualenv]
extra-search-dir =
/path/to/dists
/path/to/other/dists
.. _env_vars:
Environment Variables
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Each command line option has a corresponding environment variables with the name format
``VIRTUALENV_<UPPER_NAME>``. The ``UPPER_NAME`` is the name of the command line options capitalized and
dashes (``'-'``) replaced with underscores (``'_'``).
For example, to use a custom Python binary, instead of the one virtualenv is run with, you can set the environment
variable ``VIRTUALENV_PYTHON`` like:
.. code-block:: console
env VIRTUALENV_PYTHON=/opt/python-3.8/bin/python virtualenv
This also works for appending command line options, like :option:`extra-search-dir`, where a literal newline
is used to separate the values:
.. code-block:: console
env VIRTUALENV_EXTRA_SEARCH_DIR="/path/to/dists\n/path/to/other/dists" virtualenv
The equivalent CLI-flags based invocation, for the above example, would be:
.. code-block:: console
virtualenv --extra-search-dir=/path/to/dists --extra-search-dir=/path/to/other/dists
|
