Cursor virtual environment bug

Bug Reports
1

My virtual environment is buggy when i create a terminal inside cursor. e.g. the dependencies are not recognized. Pleas

cursor_issue
cursor_issue837×106 18.4 KB

On the image on the left is my cursor ide with the terminal. Even though I am in the virtual environment named ‘golf’, I can’t see my opencv installed. On the right, I have opened regular terminal and I can see opencv in my virtual env.

2

this issue typically occurs when Cursor’s terminal isn’t properly loading the virtual environment’s path. to troubleshoot:

  1. run these commands in both Cursor’s terminal and a regular terminal:
which python
echo $VIRTUAL_ENV
echo $PATH
  1. compare the outputs to verify if Cursor is using the correct python interpreter and environment paths.
3

The first two commands which python and echo $VIRTUAL_ENV have the same output in cursor vs regular terminal. The output of echo $PATH is different; cursor’s terminal has additional directory: /home/user/.cursor/extensions/ms-python.python-2024.12.3-linux-x64/python_files/deactivate/zsh.

The only solution that has worked for me is if I deactivate the environment (for each cursor terminal) and then reactivate again by sourcing the activate file in the virtual environment. Also, executing deactivate in cursor prints a warning message

grep: /home/user/.cursor/extensions/ms-python.python-2024.12.3-linux-x64/python_files/deactivate/zsh/envVars.txt: No such file or directory
grep: /home/user/.cursor/extensions/ms-python.python-2024.12.3-linux-x64/python_files/deactivate/zsh/envVars.txt: No such file or directory
grep: /home/user/.cursor/extensions/ms-python.python-2024.12.3-linux-x64/python_files/deactivate/zsh/envVars.txt: No such file or directory

Also, once I manually activate, the additional directory in $PATH no longer exists

4

I’m also running into this issue

5

Same issue. The integrated terminal is not usable, I have been dealing with this issue for months now.

6

Happening to me too.

which python, $PATH, $PYTHONHOME and all other commands seems to be identical but inside python we can see that the interpreter is not the one there.

(venv) ➜ app git:(main) ✗ python
Python 3.11.9 (main, Jan 27 2025, 10:02:36) [GCC 11.4.0] on linux
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.

import sys
print(“Using Python interpreter:”, sys.executable)
Using Python interpreter: /home/andre/app/cursor-0.45.11-build-250207y6nbaw5qc-x86_64.AppImage

7

Thanks for the detailed report. This is a known issue with Cursor’s terminal handling of virtual environments on Linux, specifically with AppImage installations

For now, the workaround for (deactivating and reactivating the venv) may be the best solution, if it works as hoped!

I’ve flagged this to the team, so I hope this will work better in future updates!

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