README.virtualenv.adoc

Setting up a virtual environment for IDA Python

The Python interpreter running in IDA Pro can use its own virtual environment. This is an isolation which allows Python packages to be installed for IDA Python independently from system packages.

To create a virtual environment for IDA Python, install virtualenv, then create a new empty environment using python -m virtualenv <path-to-new-virtualenv>. Make sure that the command is launched using the same Python interpreter used by IDA Pro, as selected by idapyswitch. When started, IDA Python loads the <ida-user-dir>/idapythonrc.py file. We’ll add the following lines to this file to load the environment, assuming a virtual environment was created in <ida-user-dir>/pythonenv.

import os
import idaapi

def activate_virtualenv(virtualenv_path):
    for bindir in ("Scripts", "bin"):
        activate_this_path = os.path.join(virtualenv_path, bindir, "activate_this.py")
        if os.path.exists(activate_this_path):
            break
    else:
        raise ValueError('Could not find "activate_this.py" in ' + virtualenv_path)

    with open(activate_this_path) as f:
        exec(f.read(), dict(__file__=activate_this_path))

activate_virtualenv(os.path.join(idaapi.get_user_idadir(), "python_env"))

IPyIDA supports installation and usage inside a virtual environment.

Note that since version 3.3, Python ships with venv, a minimalistic version of virtualenv. venv does not create a Python activator (the activate_this.py file) so it can’t easily be used by IDA Python.