Django container complains "error walking file system" when venv is installed

What happened?

After creating a fresh project, and then docker-compose build and up, The Django Docker container infinitely complains “error walking file system”.

What should’ve happened instead?

The Django container should start without any errors.

Additional details

This happens if you have a Python venv environment installed anywhere inside the project directory. The problem is, inside the docker container, venv symlinks to files that don’t exist in the container (e.g. /usr/bin/python3.8). I have a venv to test changes to requirements locally instead of waiting for a docker-compose build to fail (which takes a lot longer).

Steps to reproduce

Inside a new or existing cookiecutter project directory

docker-compose -f local.yml build
docker-compose -f local.yml up

Stop the containers (ctrl-c). Now, create a new python venv

python -m venv venv

Now bring up your containers and the Django Container will constantly complain “error walking file system”:

docker-compose -f local.yml up

I assume this is watchgod complaining. Let me know if this is correct or not.

If you’re open to a fix for this issue, I’ll open a pull request to update the Dockerfile and fix this problem.

[bryanus1]

I had the same problem, here is how I solved it.

In a docker container there is no need to create a virtual environment, since docker is akin to a virtual environment, so in a container we can pip install all packages globally. So when we spin up a container with a docker compose up, mapping an app folder from the host to a folder in a container, it is important to omit mapping the venv folder from the host, otherwise python gets confused, since now there is a symlink for app/venv/bin/python inside a container pointing to a python interpreter location from the host operating system. So a way to omit mapping venv from the host to a container is add this into docker-compose:

 volumes:
      - .:/app
      - app/venv/ # This line hides mapping of venv folder in the container

I test your solution and works without problems, only make a change that volume must be a absolutly path, change volumes: - .:/app - /app/venv/ add a / before app

[ruslaniv]

I had the same problem, here is how I solved it.

In a docker container there is no need to create a virtual environment, since docker is akin to a virtual environment, so in a container we can pip install all packages globally. So when we spin up a container with a docker compose up, mapping an app folder from the host to a folder in a container, it is important to omit mapping the venv folder from the host, otherwise python gets confused, since now there is a symlink for app/venv/bin/python inside a container pointing to a python interpreter location from the host operating system. So a way to omit mapping venv from the host to a container is add this into docker-compose:

 volumes:
      - .:/app
      - app/venv/ # This line hides mapping of venv folder in the container