Installing via pip fails on Ubuntu 24

According to the installation instructions, one should run pip install virtualenvwrapper to install virtualenvwrapper.

On Ubuntu 24 this fails due to the new managed env setup:

error: externally-managed-environment

× This environment is externally managed
╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try apt install
    python3-xyz, where xyz is the package you are trying to
    install.
    
    If you wish to install a non-Debian-packaged Python package,
    create a virtual environment using python3 -m venv path/to/venv.
    Then use path/to/venv/bin/python and path/to/venv/bin/pip. Make
    sure you have python3-full installed.
    
    If you wish to install a non-Debian packaged Python application,
    it may be easiest to use pipx install xyz, which will manage a
    virtual environment for you. Make sure you have pipx installed.
    
    See /usr/share/doc/python3.12/README.venv for more information.

note: If you believe this is a mistake, please contact your Python installation or OS distribution provider. You can override this, at the risk of breaking your Python installation or OS, by passing --break-system-packages.
hint: See PEP 668 for the detailed specification.

My current workaround is using the sudo apt install python3-virtualenvwrapper command instead.

Can we add this to the Documentation somewhere? Maybe with a warning flag?

@SCrocky

@SCrocky — Yes, an edit to the docs here would be great. (apt install python3-virtualenvwrapper — this sounds like what Ubuntu wants you to do.)

I actually use pipx in this case, as per the message, but you have to set VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV in this case.

If Ubuntu's Python setup is sane and you're running the command from a non-root account, running pip install --user virtualenvwrapper should also work, to install to $HOME/.local/ instead.

(In fact, installing with --user is the default when running pip from a regular user account on Fedora, and I thought the PyPa was going to make it the default for pip across-the-board.)

On a Fedora 43 machine, from my user-1000 account (see first line of output):

$ pip install virtualenvwrapper
Defaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeable
Collecting virtualenvwrapper
  Downloading virtualenvwrapper-6.1.1-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (5.1 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: virtualenv in /usr/lib/python3.14/site-packages (from virtualenvwrapper) (20.35.4)
Requirement already satisfied: virtualenv-clone in /usr/lib/python3.14/site-packages (from virtualenvwrapper) (0.5.7)
Collecting stevedore (from virtualenvwrapper)
  Downloading stevedore-5.7.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (2.4 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: distlib<1,>=0.3.7 in /usr/lib/python3.14/site-packages (from virtualenv->virtualenvwrapper) (0.4.0)
Requirement already satisfied: filelock<4,>=3.12.2 in /usr/lib/python3.14/site-packages (from virtualenv->virtualenvwrapper) (3.15.4)
Requirement already satisfied: platformdirs<5,>=3.9.1 in /usr/lib/python3.14/site-packages (from virtualenv->virtualenvwrapper) (4.2.2)
Downloading virtualenvwrapper-6.1.1-py3-none-any.whl (22 kB)
Downloading stevedore-5.7.0-py3-none-any.whl (54 kB)
Installing collected packages: stevedore, virtualenvwrapper
Successfully installed stevedore-5.7.0 virtualenvwrapper-6.1.1

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Installing via pip fails on Ubuntu 24 #122

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Installing via pip fails on Ubuntu 24 #122

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carltongibson commented on Apr 28, 2026

ferdnyc commented on May 4, 2026

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