For your development environment? Seriously?
>I wish I could deploy our python apps with virtualenv alone
I thought this was about dev environments? For deployment (and testing deployment) I use a virtual machine too - vagrant/virtualbox + ansible. Yes, I wouldn't want to pollute my computer with that stuff either.
I wouldn't want to develop inside a virtual machine, though.
I also like to make sure the devs are working with an environment that translates directly to production (docker makes this much easier now). I really don't enjoy sorting out a blob of code that only works with your specific local configuration:
- ok requires opencv (or other complicated dependency). No problem, that's already in production. - Oh it only builds against the 2.4.7.1 version you have on your machine. - Hmm, 2.4.7.1 has a bug when used with common_lib version X on distro Y - etc.
I wish I could deploy our python apps with virtualenv alone, but before docker we ended up having to create our own deployment system to wrap the virtualenv with all the associated dependencies so it could be pushed to various environments in a deterministic manner.