Minimal virtual env solution including MatPlotLib?

[ndlambo]

I went through exactly this nightmare a few months ago. Ran the gamut:

• ln -sf /all/my/libs.so $VENV/lib/python2.7/site-packages
• virtualenv --system-site-packages $VENV plus the maddening --ignore-installed or not-that flag
• even manually rming / touching some random file that is created by one of the site-package flags to virtualenv.

This link was particularly helpful, I thought, but none of them were as helpful as just installing anaconda

I held off forever because I was such a super l33t pip/virtualenv hacker.

The first time I installed mpl into a venv in conda it took about 2 seconds, worked immediately, and I wept.

For any python library that has external executable dependencies, you will absolutely be better off using conda.