How can I ignore the 'VIRTUAL_ENV' environment variable?

[jacebrowning]

• I have searched the issues of this repo and believe that this is not a duplicate.

Issue

In my projects, I create the virtual environment in the project root ($ poetry config settings.virtualenvs.in-project true) so that I can explicitly manage dependencies and cache them between builds.

Travis CI runs builds inside of its own virtual environment (thus sets VIRTUAL_ENV).

The current logic consults VIRTUAL_ENV before any other settings: https://github.com/sdispater/poetry/blob/ae1773d68f341c34d9124353f7a952d5fd3cfefb/poetry/utils/venv.py#L47-L50

How can I tell poetry to ignore VIRTUAL_ENV and always create a virtual environment?

pipenv gets around this by adding another environment variable (PIPENV_IGNORE_VIRTUALENVS). but I think poetry can do better.

---

Proposal A

The default value of settings.virtualenvs.create is inferred from VIRTUAL_ENV (false if set, true if unset).

If the user runs $ poetry config settings.virtualenvs.create true then poetry will always create a virtual environment irrespective of VIRTUAL_ENV.

Proposal B

Add settings.virtualenvs.ignore-active to ignore VIRTUAL_ENV when creating a virtual environment.

Proposal C

If settings.virtualenvs.in-project is set and ./.venv/ does not exist then VIRTUAL_ENV is ignored.

[digitalresistor]

@jacebrowning, run poetry while unsetting VIRTUAL_ENV:

env -u VIRTUAL_ENV poetry

Now even though you are "Inside" an virtual environment, poetry won't know about it.

[jacebrowning]

@bertjwregeer Thanks for the tip. This actually results in the same behavior, but for a different reason.

Given this part of the Travis CI configuration:

cache:
  directories:
    - .venv

1. Travis CI creates .venv from the (yet to exist) cached virtual environment.
2. Poetry sees this empty .venv directory and incorreclty assumes the virtual environment has already been created.
3. It them proceds to install dependencies globaly (also noted on Option to create virtual environments in the project root (.venv) #108), which is actually into Travis CI's existing virtual environment.
4. The end result is that .venv is still empty, Travis CI caches the empty directory, and the cycle repeats.

[cauebs]

Poetry sees this empty .venv directory and incorreclty assumes the virtual environment has already been created.

That's most definitely a bug!

[jacebrowning]

I filed that here: #286

[stefanfoulis]

I am running into a related problem. I have poetry installed with pipsi (https://github.com/mitsuhiko/pipsi). Now poetry uses that isolated virtualenv that is only meant for the poetry command itself, instead of creating a new one.

[digitalresistor]

@stefanfoulis #527

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