Meltano

Also, having meltano installed in a virtualenv which is not in the project folder doesn’t work. It fails on finding pip when installing any tap

bash_output.txt

<@U06CBUULHMH> Hmm, that's weird, because I'm actually using a venv outside of the project directory myself. If `/private/tmp/meltano-testing/example-project/.meltano/extractors/tap-gitlab/venv/bin/pip` doesn't exist, could you show me what files _do_ exist in `/private/tmp/meltano-testing/example-project/.meltano/extractors/tap-gitlab/venv/bin` ?

I have no idea where the `/private`  prefix comes from. This is just my `/tmp`  folder on my mac, which I used as a blank space to avoid having anything interfering. This also happens in my actual ‘normal’ folder in my repo where I’m trying it out, and there I get the same error, this is the content of the directory

<@U06CBUULHMH> It looks like for some reason, the `pip` executable is not being created when Meltano creates the `tap-gitlab`  venv :confused: In my case, the directory looks like this:

A brand-new venv created using `python3 -m venv venv` already comes with `bin/pip`  for me, so the challenge here is in figuring out why your Python behaves differently :slightly_smiling_face:

_Reading <https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html>..._

<@U06CBUULHMH> What do you see under `venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages`? That has `setuptools`  and `pip`  directories for me

Per the docs, "Unless the `--without-pip` option is given, `ensurepip` will be invoked to bootstrap `pip` into the virtual environment."

Unless you've modified <https://gitlab.com/meltano/meltano/blob/master/src/meltano/core/venv_service.py#L59|this line>, `--without-pip`  is _not_ given, so we'd expect pip to be bootstrapped (as it is on my machine), unless your `ensurepip`  is broken for some reason? :confused:

I'm not sure why we're seeing different behavior with the venv inside or outside your project directory either

I'd love to help out further, but I don't think there's much more we can find out here without access to your system :slightly_smiling_face: Let me know if the above helps you in figuring out what may be happening!