virtualenv 101

I'm working furiously on the Python textbook. The html2rst.py script I used to convert lore to reST did a pretty good job, but it now requires a human touch to get it looking right. I'm using Sphinx to build the web version, and last night I asked Filip Sufitchi if he could help me get the auto index generation working. He said he would, which is great news!

A quick review of how I setup a new python virtual environment so I could run the latest version of Sphinx and build the book from the reST source without messing up my Ubuntu installation:

• make sure the python-virtualenv package is installed
• $ virtualenv --no-site-packages PythonVEone
• $ source PythonVEone/bin/activate
• $ cd PythonVEone
• $ easy_install sphinx
• $ cp -r ../Ubuntu\ One/My\ Files/Projects/Sphinx/thinkcspy2/english2e/ thinkcspy2e
• $ thinkcspy2e
• $ sphinx-build source build

OK, back to work on the book...