Error with pointing to correct python version: virtualenvwrapper.sh

I get this error when I boot up terminal:

Last login: Thu Apr  9 19:49:08 on ttys001
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python: No module named virtualenvwrapper
virtualenvwrapper.sh: There was a problem running the initialization hooks. 

If Python could not import the module virtualenvwrapper.hook_loader,
check that virtualenvwrapper has been installed for
VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python and that PATH is
set properly.
dhcp-128-189-78-23:~ user_me$ 

I need to “point” my virtual environment to the version of python I’m using.

How can I do this?

Answer

I had the same exact issue and updating my path didn’t help anything, nor did setting VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON and VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV. This is because I was seeing this strange behavior when running my version of python:

$ /usr/local/bin/python
Python 2.7.6 (v2.7.6:3a1db0d2747e, Nov 10 2013, 00:42:54)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> print sys.executable
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python

I was able to fix everything by uninstalling python with brew, reinstalling python with brew, and forcing it to overwrite existing symlinks in /usr/local/bin.

brew uninstall --force python
brew install python
brew link --overwrite python
brew linkapps python
pip install --upgrade pip setuptools
sudo pip uninstall virtualenv
pip install virtualenv
sudo pip uninstall virtualenvwrapper
pip install virtualenvwrapper

Hopefully you were able to get past this issue when you encountered it six months ago. I wanted to post my solution in case others run in to the same issue and cannot solve it by setting their paths and env variables.