Dead SD Card: How do I salvage the python virtual environment on my USB SSD Drive?

Question

Last week, my SD card died. I have a python virtual environment on a USB SSD that required a lot of work. Ideally, I'd be able to reactivate the environment, but it seems that none of my original packages are recognized as installed.

I realize that the recommendation before moving a virtual environment is to run:

pip freeze > requirements.txt

I can't do that because all I have left is the SSD drive and a clean Raspbian. Is there any way I can salvage this environment without having to reinstall everything? There are several machine learning libraries that will be a pain in the ass to reinstall.

Answer 1

You can do it if the device is the same. The point of a virtual environment is to be able to replicate it everywhere you need it.

Make a script that installs all necessary dependencies from a requirements.txt file and use it.

Use the command bellow to get the list of all python packages installed:

pip freeze > requirements.txt

Then install the dependencies in another virtual environment on another computer using:

pip install -r requirements.txt`

If you want the exact environment, including system packages, on another computer, use Docker. Sources: 01 - 02