Python (Windows Server) Virtualenv not recognizing Django is installed

Question

My virtual environment refuses to recognize my install of Django (strangely)

I'm on Windows Server, installed Python 3.7 to a directory ( C:\\Python37 ) which I have C:\\Python37;C:\\Python37\\Scripts in my windows Path so when using Powershell or GitBash I can use the python command.

if I run where python it shows the default install

I CD into my django project directory and run: python virtualenv venv and the venv directory is created

Then I run source venv/Scripts/activate and it activates appropriately.

When I run where python it shows the exe inside the venv directory - which is expected and appropriate.

I run pip install -r requirements.txt and all my requirements install appropriately. I confirm they are installed with pip freeze (all installed correctly)

Once I do that I go to run python manage.py collectstatic (no migrations are required in this particular instance) I get an error message that Django isn't installed.

To check this, with my virtualenv still activated I enter the shell ( python )

If I do import django it also says Django is not installed.

I cannot figure out what's happening here - the python version appears to be correct, the correct virtualenv is activated - but it's still not seeing the properly installed Django installation.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Answer 1

For what it's worth - here is the solution and explanation:

Everything works as expected as was outlined in the question - the reason that the actual python command wasn't working had to do with a line in the .bashrc file.

There was an alias in the .bashrc file to set python to the command winpty C:\\Python37\\python

So when the command python manage.py collectstatic was getting ran - it was looking at the Python executable in the Python37 directory and not the virtualenvironment Python.

This was solved by simply running the appropriate Python (eg) C:/my_project/venv/Scripts/python manage.py collectstatic

This forced it to use the virtualenvironment python to run the command so everything worked as expected.