vf install not working about virtualfish

[loudmouth]

Lucky enough to just have gotten a fresh machine that I'm setting up and I'm experiencing the same issue, exactly as described above, except instead of the terminal hanging, vf simply isn't a command available in my path. Once i run eval (python -m virtualfish) suddenly vf is found, but then i get the warning.

using fish 3.6.1 and python 3.9.17 installed via pyenv.

[justinmayer]

I tested this without --user, in a new virtual environment, and I can't replicate this problem:

virtualenv vftest && source vftest/bin/activate.fish
python -m pip install virtualfish
mv ~/.config/fish/conf.d/virtualfish-loader.fish ~/
exec fish
vf install
exec fish
vf ls

In short, everything functions as expected when I follow the above steps. Perhaps try something similar, without --user, and see if you see anything different?

[loudmouth]

Hey Justin, thanks for the quick reply,

Removing the --user flag didn't improve anything for me. I had 2 questions based on what you posted above:

1. is installing virtualenv first a requirement? While that logically would make sense, it's not listed in the docs, so I thought virtualfish would install its own dependencies.
2. Is the virtualfish-loader a requirement to get things working properly? I have the loader on my old machine, but porting it over had caused some issues as the script had a hardcoded version of python in it. I didn't see anything in the docs about it, so I elected to just delete it while setting things up.

[justinmayer]

1. No. I just did that as a test to see if I could replicate the problem. 2. That file is what is installed when `vf install` is invoked. I’m not sure what’s causing that issue. Obviously it would be easier if I could reproduce it on my end.

[loudmouth]

got it. knowing that the script is added during installation helped. I had actually copied my fish config folder over from a previous machine so it probably explains it. I uninstalled and reinstalled virtualfish via pip and on reinstallation, i got a warning:

  WARNING: The script vf is installed in '/Users/MY_USER/.local/bin' which is not on PATH.
  Consider adding this directory to PATH or, if you prefer to suppress this warning, use --no-warn-script-location.

after adding /Users/MY_USER/.local/bin to my path, vf was available and i was able to run vf install.

Though my issue sounds similar to the original author's post, I wonder if there is some idiosyncracy in the personal migration route I took from old machine to new 🤷 anyway, it's working for me now. I appreciate your efforts in troubleshooting.

[justinmayer]

Inside ~/.config/fish/conf.d/virtualfish-loader.fish, VirtualFish stores the path to the Python interpreter used when VirtualFish was installed inside the VIRTUALFISH_PYTHON_EXEC variable:

set -g VIRTUALFISH_VERSION 2.5.5
set -g VIRTUALFISH_PYTHON_EXEC /some/path/to/bin/python
source /Users/jm/Projects/virtualfish/virtualfish/virtual.fish
source /Users/jm/Projects/virtualfish/virtualfish/compat_aliases.fish
source /Users/jm/Projects/virtualfish/virtualfish/projects.fish
source /Users/jm/Projects/virtualfish/virtualfish/environment.fish
emit virtualfish_did_setup_plugins

As such, I imagine you will indeed experience problems if you copy that file to a new machine where that path does not point to a Python interpreter.

The vf install step creates the ~/.config/fish/conf.d/virtualfish-loader.fish file, with the contents being the lines shown above.

@CSJ7701: Instead of running vf install, what happens if you manually create ~/.config/fish/conf.d/virtualfish-loader.fish with the above contents (adjusting the VIRTUALFISH_PYTHON_EXEC value appropriately) and then run exec fish? Does vf then behave as you would expect?

[CSJ7701]

I think I have managed to solve my issue.
Instead of installing using pip, I installed virtualfish using my system's package manager. I then faced another issue, where I got an "invalid version" error from packaging.version.parse(). This seperate issue was mentioned in #238 and I fixed it by changing cmd = ["fish", "-c", "echo $version"] in virtualfish/loader/cli.py to cmd = ["fish", "-N", "-c", "echo $version"].

[justinmayer]

Thank you, Christian, for taking a moment to report your findings and close this issue. Regarding the separate issue you mentioned, the just-released VirtualFish 2.5.6 should address it. 😁