Hi. I’m new to pulumi and I’m trying to get the python aws quickstart (https://www.pulumi.com/docs/get-started/aws/) example working using the github actions docs (https://www.pulumi.com/docs/guides/continuous-delivery/github-actions/) but I’m getting an error

error: "/github/workspace/venv" doesn't appear to be a virtual environment

. Can anyone here tell me how to activate my venv in the

uses:

block please? Thanks!

Hi Adrian, As of the most recent version of Pulumi (v2.4.0), when you create a new Pulumi Python program with

pulumi new

,

pulumi

creates a lightweight virtual environment in a

venv

directory, runs

venv\bin\pip install -r requirements.txt

to install dependencies in the virtual environment, and sets the

virtualenv: venv

option in

Pulumi.yaml

which tells the CLI to use that virtual environment when subsequent commands (like

pulumi up

) are run. In prior versions, you’d have to do this manually and ensure you’d run

pulumi up

from an activated shell. By default, a

.gitignore

file is generated for the project with an entry that excludes the

venv/

dir from Git, so by default the

venv

dir won’t be included in any commits. I’m guessing you’re seeing the error because you have

virtualenv: venv

set in

Pulumi.yaml

but no actual

venv

directory in the repo? We should consider improving the Pulumi GitHub Action to take the new

virtualenv

option in

Pulumi.yaml

into account, creating the virtual environment (if it doesn’t exist) and installing dependencies into it automatically. I’ve opened https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi/issues/4871 to track this. In the meantime, it’d probably be easiest to simply remove the

virtualenv: venv

option from

Pulumi.yaml

. This does mean when developing the program locally on your machine you’ll need to manage a virtual environment yourself (if you don’t want to be installing dependencies globally on your machine). On macOS/Linux you can do this via:

python3 -m venv venv

, activate it by using

source venv/bin/activate

, and then install dependencies into it via

pip install -r requirements.txt

. Be sure to run

pulumi preview

or

pulumi up

from the activated shell. Or use a tool like Pipenv to create/manage the virtual environment.