title: Why do you need to set the WORKON_HOME environment variable?
body: <p>I haven't used my python/virtual environments in a while, but I do have virtualenvironment wrapper installed also.</p>
  
  <p>My question is, in the doc page it says to do this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>export WORKON_HOME=~/Envs
  $ mkdir -p $WORKON_HOME
  $ source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
  $ mkvirtualenv env1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I simply did this at my prompt:</p>
  
  <pre><code>source /usr/local/bin/virutalenvwrapper.sh
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And now I can list and select an environment by doing:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;workon
  
  &gt;workon envtest1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My question is, since this works for me, I'm confused why I should be creating an environmental variable WORKON_HOME and point it to the ~/Envs folder?  What does that do and how come mine works fine w/o it?  I don't have that /Envs folder either (I know the script creates it).</p>
  
  <p>Reference: <a href="http://virtualenvwrapper.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">http://virtualenvwrapper.readthedocs.org/en/latest/</a></p>