pixi environment are recognised as "global" by pip

[abey79]

Checks

• I have checked that this issue has not already been reported.

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the latest version of pixi, using pixi --version.

Reproducible example

$ pixi run pip --require-virtualenv freeze
ERROR: Could not find an activated virtualenv (required).

Issue description

With --require-virtualenv flag, pip refuses most operation unless a virtual environment is detected, such as to avoid installing stuff globally by mistake.

This issue happened to me because:

• I have PIP_REQUIRE_VIRTUALENV=1 set globally.
• maturin develop calls into pip behind the scenes

Workaround: explicitly set PIP_REQUIRE_VIRTUALENV to zero (which is easy enough for us as the maturin call is actually behind a task).

Expected behavior

Ideally, pip would think it's ok to install stuff in pixi-managed environments (though there might obviously be implications that I ignore).

[olivier-lacroix]

It is an issue with any conda environment, and not only pixi ones. See for instance https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54263894/how-do-i-allow-pip-inside-anaconda3-venv-when-pip-set-to-require-virtualenv

Using tasks seems like a good way around the issue.

[baszalmstra]

This issue is inherent to conda environments as explained by @olivier-lacroix . Closing this for now as won't fix.

[abey79]

I ran into this again today.

Although I understand that the root cause of this issue lies outside of pixi itself, it does make (some uses of) pixi impractical together with the otherwise highly recommended practice of forbidding pip install into the global environment.

Couldn't pixi simply override this env var if set?