qiime-deploy and virtualenv

[gblanchard4]

QIIME is now a prerequisite for a qiime-deploy since pip makes it super easy to install. This is different from the past installs using qiime-deploy since QIIME came bundled with them.

Is there any reason why qiime-deploy doesn't create a virtualenv for QIIME to install to as a first step? The qiime-deploy activate.sh could be prepended with a command to source the virtualenv like source ../qiime19/qiime19-base/bin/activate

This would also have the benefit of allowing users to load/unload the QIIME 1.9(.1) software similar to the way macqiime is handled.

[jairideout]

That's an interesting idea, I think that would work! Just a heads up, we're not actively adding features to qiime-deploy as we'll be completely reworking (and simplifying!) the QIIME install process for QIIME 2 (likely using the conda environment and package manager).

[gblanchard4]

Thats how I have been setting it up on my machines, and haven't run into any issues. The ability to load/unload it without package conflicts is definitely a benefit.

Thanks for the update about conda. I have been following that on the QIIME issues, and figured qiime-deploy would be going that way.