Currently, virtualenv is a separate application, allowing virtualization of Python installations. For Python 3.3, a built-in mechanism is being developed.

Possible GSoC projects:

• Creating a test suite for this virtualization mechanism.

• Building the standard-library module that will actually create virtual environments, by copying or symlinking the python binary to a given location and placing a default virtualization config file near it.

Important background information to review if proposing to work on this:

• Distutils-SIG mailing list threads mentioning "pythonv," beginning with "early preview of pythonv."

• The work-in-progress repository at Bitbucket and its open issues.

• The source code of virtualenv.

• This PyCon presentation on how virtualenv works.