Relocatable (self-contained) Python built from source tarball inside virtualenv environment?

Question

I have looked at the virtualenv documentation and also found this question here at StackOverflow. However, neither answer my question or I may be missing something, so I am asking.

How can I create a virtualenv environment which contains a python that doesn't depend on the (system-wide) python of the "host"? I.e. I want a fully self-contained virtualenv with its own Python 2.7 compiled from source. Another property would be important: since virtualenv isn't the same as chroot the python inside the virtualenv has to cope with different absolute paths.

I reckon the closest to what I want is a virtualenv --relocatable with its own Python installation inside.

How can I achieve that?

Rationale

I have some older Linux boxes with different versions of Python offered through the package manager. The admin won't allow me to build a more recent Python on the boxes, so I need to be able to install a Python from source into the constrained environment I have.

Properties I need:

• virtualenv environment should be fully self-contained (complete Python with all libraries etc)
• the python inside should work regardless of its absolute path when deployed
  • I'm aware the $ENV/bin/python seems to do that, but it also seems to rely on the python installed system-wide. I want to cut this dependency out completely, rolling my own Python.
• Should behave like with virtualenv --relocatable but needs to contain a full Python installation as well.

Issues that can be ignored for the scope of this question:

• Architecture/platform. This will run only on a single architecture and the virtualenv environment will be built for each platform (currently only various Linux distros).

Answer 1

Meanwhile — more than ten years later — solutions exist in the form of indygreg/python-build-standalone and astral-sh/uv which satisfy most of the needs I had back in the day.

Just leaving this here for those still in search and unhappy with the ten year old answer.

Answer 2

1. get the python source
2. ./configure --prefix=/dest
3. make && make install

congratulations, you now have a python installation that's completely independent of the system python in /dest. Moving this directory shouldn't be a problem, if that's what you mean with 'relocatable'.

To use this installation instead of the system python, just make sure to put /dest/bin on the PATH before the standard locations.

If that's not enough for you, you can setup a virtualenv using this python installation...