How to install the python library inside a virtualenv?

[munikarmanish]

After following the instructions in the INSTALL.md file, I can successfully import bcc from the system python interpreter (v3.6). But I cannot import bcc from the python within the virtualenv (v3.7). I want to write BPF program with some 3.7 features (time.time_ns) How can I install the python bcc library inside a virtualenv? I'm used to installing per-virtualenv python packages using pip, but this library doesn't seem to have that option. Thanks in advance. :)

[willfindlay]

Are you using pipenv? If so, you can install bcc normally and pass --site-packages as a flag to pipenv as a workaround. As far as I know, there is no good way to get bcc working properly with a virtual environment.

[photoszzt]

If you already created the virtual env, you can copy the bcc dir to your virtualenv's lib dir. I'm not sure whether symlink would work.

[gukoff]

You can also workaround this by importing bcc from the global location.
Caveat is that different platforms will have a different "global location", and many platforms try to import from the places like "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/bcc/__init__.py".

Example for Debian:

try:
    import bcc
except ImportError:
    spec = importlib.util.spec_from_file_location("bcc", "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/bcc/__init__.py")
    if spec:
        module = importlib.util.module_from_spec(spec)
        sys.modules['bcc'] = module
        spec.loader.exec_module(module)