Rodesia.org

iPython is a great replacement for the standard Python shell, but, out of the box, it doesn’t play well with virtualenv.

This can be fixed with a couple of changes:

In the terminal generate an iPython default config file:

ipython profile create

Open the newly generated file:

vi ~/.ipython/profile_default/ipython_config.py

Add the following code at the end of the ipython_config.py file:

import site
from os import environ
from os.path import join
from sys import version_info

if 'VIRTUAL_ENV' in environ:
    virtual_env = join(environ.get('VIRTUAL_ENV'),
                       'lib',
                       'python%d.%d' % version_info[:2],
                       'site-packages')
    site.addsitedir(virtual_env)
    print 'VIRTUAL_ENV ->', virtual_env
    del virtual_env
del site, environ, join, version_info

And that’s it, iPython should now be virtualenv aware.

The Python Imaging Library, PIL, is a very useful addition to your Python installation if you need to manipulate pictures. Django uses it to validate upload images for example.

On a Mac you do need to install libjpeg beforehand.

Install libjpeg:

• Get the source: http://www.ijg.org/files/jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz

• Extract the archive.

• Move inside the source directory and execute the following commands:

  cp /usr/share/libtool/config.sub .
  cp /usr/share/libtool/config.guess .
  ./configure --enable-shared
  make
  sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/include
  sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin
  sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/lib
  sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/man/man1
  sudo make install
  

Install PIL:

• Get PIL at: http://effbot.org/downloads/Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz

• Extract the archive.

• Move inside the source directory

• Change the following values in setup.py from the default None to:

  JPEG_ROOT = "/usr/local/include"
  ZLIB_ROOT = "/usr/local/include"
  

• Check if everything is well configured:

  python setup.py build_ext -i
  python selftest.py
  

• If no errors are found and the required libraries are installed (like JPEG support), install PIL:

  sudo python setup.py install
  

And that’s it, I’ve tried this on Mac OS Leopard, and it works fine, let me know how it went for you.