Installing into a virtualenv on Windows fails when the location changes

[ak-gupta]

Hi there!

uv is awesome, but we're running into an issue with installing into a virtualenv on Windows. If I run

uv pip install --python=/path/to/python

I sometimes get an error message similar to the following:

RuntimeError: Unable to run the following command: 

 uv pip install --python=C:\Users\RUNNER~1\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp3hg_0oka\.edgetest\core\Scripts\python .[tests]
WARNING  venv:__init__.py:165 Actual environment location may have moved due to redirects, links or junctions.
  Requested location: "C:\Users\RUNNER~1\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp3hg_0oka\.edgetest\lower_env\Scripts\python.exe"
  Actual location:    "C:\Users\runneradmin\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp3hg_0oka\.edgetest\lower_env\Scripts\python.exe"

this is running on GitHub Actions using windows-latest and uv version 0.2.28. If curious, the error log is in the job from this PR. Any help is greatly appreciated!

[charliermarsh]

Thanks, that's an interesting one. Those are indeed aliases for one another. Let me see why it's failing...

[charliermarsh]

In utils.py, can you modify the exception to include all of stdout and stderr? The directory mismatch may be the problem, but it's also just a warning and so not the immediate cause of the failure.

https://github.com/capitalone/edgetest/blob/8ac71cdb26516e2120745934febc724732ab0e8d/edgetest/utils.py#L46

[ak-gupta]

Thanks for the quick reply! I updated the logging and got this output:

WARNING  venv:__init__.py:158 Actual environment location may have moved due to redirects, links or junctions.
  Requested location: "C:\Users\RUNNER~1\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp3l_vmwg8\.edgetest\core\Scripts\python.exe"
  Actual location:    "C:\Users\runneradmin\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp3l_vmwg8\.edgetest\core\Scripts\python.exe"
ERROR    edgetest.core:core.py:178 Unable to install the local package into core
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\a\edgetest\edgetest\edgetest\core.py", line 171, in setup
    _run_command(
  File "D:\a\edgetest\edgetest\edgetest\utils.py", line 46, in _run_command
    raise RuntimeError(
RuntimeError: Unable to run the following command: 

 uv pip install --python=C:\Users\RUNNER~1\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp3l_vmwg8\.edgetest\core\Scripts\python .[tests] 

Returned the following stdout: 

  

Returned the following stderr: 

 error: No virtual or system environment found for path `.edgetest\core\Scripts\python`

Just to note -- our current code uses pip with commands equivalent to

C:\Users\RUNNER~1\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp3l_vmwg8\.edgetest\core\Scripts\python -m pip install .[tests]

since I haven't changed the logic for finding the virtual environment

[charliermarsh]

Thanks! Just to confirm, is .edgetest\core a virtual environment?

[ak-gupta]

Yes! Essentially our package creates a series of virtual environments, upgrades core dependencies to the latest available version, then runs testing to see if the current library is compatible with upgraded dependencies. For this example, we're using venv.EnvBuilder(Path.cwd() / ".edgetest" / "core", with_pip=False)

[charliermarsh]

I think it needs to be python.exe.

[charliermarsh]

That may not matter here though. One sec.

[charliermarsh]

Ok yeah tracing the code, I think that might be the problem here.

[ak-gupta]

Ah. Let me try that!

[charliermarsh]

We can probably be robust to it, but can you try changing to add the .exe extension on your end?

[ak-gupta]

Yep, I'll push up a change and see if that fixes the issue

[ak-gupta]

The .exe extension fixed the issue! Thank you!

[charliermarsh]

Stellar. @zanieb do you think we should be robust to this? I.e., passing --python .edgetest\core\Scripts\python without the .exe suffix? (We detect that it's a "file" path, but we later fail to find the file.)

[charliermarsh]

I'll just fix it, easy and will be a common footgun.

[zanieb]

Seems okay to infer the .exe on Windows, yeah.