It's not path-relative: I can't copy an env from one dir to another. It's an external tool that you need to enable separately from your execution, when really it should've been part of Python's base binary (resolving libs from the CWD to user libpath to system libpath), to name just a couple issues.
virtualenv appears to be a giant, epic work-around for... what exactly? Somehow, perl managed to achieve the same thing with the PERL5LIB envar. And did it in a far more portable, reusable and repeatable way.
Exactly. I love Python for many other reasons, but how they still haven't managed to fix local vs user vs system libraries, when pretty much every other language has, and think virtualenv is an acceptable solution, is beyond me.
Of course, since they have many geniuses working on their codebase, I assume the problem must actually be pretty fundamental and tricky.... right?