This is basically what I did whenever starting on new Python project. mkdir project_name cd project_name wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/bootstrap-buildout.py vim buildout.cfg Where my buildout.cfg look like:- [buildout] parts = main [main] recipe = zc.recipe.egg eggs = python-telegram-bot interpreter = python Then I just execute the following to get my new python environment initialize:- python bootstrap.py ./bin/buildout A python interpreter that already has access to my packages dependencies - in this case python-telegram-bot is ready in ./bin/python . I'm a fan of buildout and shall write more about it in later post.