Python package guidelines

This document covers standards and guidelines on writing PKGBUILDs for Python software.

Package naming

For Python 3 library modules, use python-modulename. Also use the prefix if the package provides a program that is strongly coupled to the Python ecosystem (e.g. pip or tox). For other applications, use only the program name.

The same applies to Python 2 except that the prefix (if needed) is python2-.

Note: The package name should be entirely lowercase.

Architecture

See PKGBUILD#arch.

A Python package that contains C extensions using the ext_modules keyword in setup.py, is architecture-dependent. Otherwise it is most likely architecture-independent.

Source

Download URLs linked from the PyPI website include an unpredictable hash that needs to be fetched from the PyPI website each time a package must be updated. This makes them unsuitable for use in a PKGBUILD. PyPI provides an alternative stable scheme: PKGBUILD#source source=() array should use the following URL templates:

Source package

https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/source/${_name::1}/$_name/$_name-$pkgver.tar.gz

Pure Python wheel package

https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/py2.py3/${_name::1}/$_name/${_name//-/_}-$pkgver-py2.py3-none-any.whl (Bilingual – Python 2 and Python 3 compatible)

https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/py3/${_name::1}/$_name/${_name//-/_}-$pkgver-py3-none-any.whl (Python 3 only)

Note that the distribution name can contain dashes, while its representation in a wheel filename cannot (they are converted to underscores).

Arch specific wheel package

in this example for source_x86_64=('...'). Also _py=cp310 can be used to not repeat the python version:

https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/$_py/${_name::1}/$_name/${_name//-/_}-$pkgver-$_py-${_py}m-manylinux1_x86_64.whl

Note that a custom _name variable is used instead of pkgname since python packages are generally prefixed with python-. This variable can generically be defined as follows:

_name=${pkgname#python-}

Installation methods

Python packages are generally installed using language-specific tools, such as pip or easy_install (deprecated), which are comparable to dedicated package managers in that they are designed to fetch the source files from an online repository (usually PyPI, the Python Package Index) and track the relevant files (for a detailed comparison between the two, see pip vs easy_install).

However, for managing Python packages from within PKGBUILDs, the standard-provided distutils proves to be the most convenient solution since it uses the downloaded source package's setup.py and easily installs files under $pkgdir/usr/lib/python<python version>/site-packages/$pkgname directory.

Note: Dependencies from setup.py must be defined in the depends array otherwise they will not be installed.

distutils

A distutils PKGBUILD is usually quite simple:

build() {
    python setup.py build
}

package() {
    python setup.py install --root="$pkgdir" --optimize=1
}

where:

• python is replaced with the proper binary, python or python2
• --root="$pkgdir" prevents trying to directly install in the host system instead of inside the package file, which would result in a permission error
• --optimize=1 compiles optimized bytecode files (.pyo for Python 2, .opt-1.pyc for Python 3) so they can be tracked by pacman instead of being created on the host system on demand
• Adding --skip-build optimizes away the unnecessary attempt to re-run the build steps already run in the build() function, if that is the case.

setuptools

The Python packaging scene has largely migrated from distutils to setuptools, which is actively developed and functions as a drop-in replacement import in setup.py. The main difference for packagers is that setuptools is packaged separately from Python itself, and must be specified as a makedepends:

makedepends=('python-setuptools')

If the resulting package includes executables which import the pkg_resources module, then setuptools must be additionally specified as a depends in the split package_*() functions; alternatively, if the PKGBUILD only installs the Python package for a single version of Python, setuptools should be moved from makedepends to depends.

Some packages try to use setuptools and fall back to distutils if setuptools could not be imported. In this case, setuptools should be added as a makedepends, so that the resulting python metadata is better.

If a package needs setuptools to build due to including executables (which is not supported by distutils), but only imports distutils, then building will raise a warning, and the resulting package will be broken (it will not contain the executables):

/usr/lib/python3.8/distutils/dist.py:274: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'entry_points'
  warnings.warn(msg)

An upstream bug should be reported. To work around the problem, an undocumented setuptools feature can be used:

# fails because of distutils
python setup.py build

# works by using a setuptools shim
python -m setuptools.launch setup.py build

pip

If you need to use pip (provided by python-pip), e.g. for installing wheel packages, remember to pass the following flags:

PIP_CONFIG_FILE=/dev/null pip install --isolated --root="$pkgdir" --ignore-installed --no-deps *.whl

• PIP_CONFIG_FILE=/dev/null ignores {/etc,~/.config}/pip.conf that may be appending arbitrary flags to pip.
• --isolated ignores environment variables (and again {/etc,~/.config}/pip/pip.conf) that may otherwise also be appending arbitrary flags to pip.
• --ignore-installed is necessary until https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/3063 is resolved (otherwise pip skips the install in the presence of an earlier --user install).
• --no-deps ensures, that dependencies do not get packaged together with the main package.

pip does not know how to generate .pyo (or for 3.5 and later, .pyc) files (see https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/2209). In order to generate them manually after pip has installed the module, run:

python -O -m compileall "${pkgdir}/path/to/module"

Warning: Use of pip and/or wheel packages is discouraged in favor of setuptools source packages, and should only be used when the latter is not a viable option (for example, packages which only come with wheel sources, and therefore cannot be installed using setuptools).

Build-time 2to3 translation

Most Python projects target either Python 2 or Python 3, or target both using compatibility layers like six. However, some use the deprecated 2to3 keyword in setuptools to heuristically convert the source code from Python 2 to Python 3 at build time. As a result, the same source directories cannot be used to build both Python 2 and Python 3 split packages.

For packages that do this, we need a prepare() function that copies the source before it is built. Then the Python 2 and Python 3 packages can be converted and built independently without overriding each other.

makedepends=("python-setuptools" "python2-setuptools")

prepare() {
    cp -a foo-$pkgver{,-py2}
}

build() {
    cd "$srcdir/foo-$pkgver"
    python setup.py build

    cd "$srcdir/foo-$pkgver-py2"
    python2 setup.py build
}

package_python-foo() {
    depends=("python")
    cd "$srcdir/foo-$pkgver"
    python setup.py install --root="$pkgdir/" --optimize=1
}

package_python2-foo() {
    depends=("python2")
    cd "$srcdir/foo-$pkgver-py2"
    python2 setup.py install --root="$pkgdir/" --optimize=1
}

pyproject.toml (PEP 517)

If an upstream only provides a pyproject.toml (PEP 517) in their source tarball, most of the time it is possible to convert it to a setup.py and use #setuptools as usual.

Add python-dephell to makedepends and generate the setuptools integration in prepare():

makedepends=("python-setuptools" "python-dephell")

prepare() {
    cd "$pkgname-$pkgver"
    dephell deps convert --from pyproject.toml --to setup.py
}

setuptools without a setup.py

The PEP 517 build-backend setuptools.build_meta does not need a setup.py file to exist, and if one does not exist, a minimal one is implied (most such projects will, however, include the minimal one in the upstream tarball):

from setuptools import setup
setup()

This breaks compatibility with non-PEP 517 installation methods, such as Linux distributions (as of June 2020, there is no option other than pip). Painful hacks are needed to build; either create the minimal setup.py yourself, or use

python -c "from setuptools import setup; setup()"

in place of

python setup.py

An example of this is ansible-lint.

This page will eventually be updated once a non-gross way is found.

Check

Warning: Avoid using tox to run testsuites as it is explicitly designed to test repeatable configurations downloaded from PyPI while tox is running, and does not test the version that will be installed by the package. This defeats the purpose of having a check function at all.

Most python projects providing a testsuite use nosetests or pytest to run tests with test in the name of the file or directory containing the testsuite. In general, simply running nosetests or pytest is enough to run the testsuite.

check(){
    cd "$srcdir/foo-$pkgver"

    # For nosetests
    nosetests

    # For pytest
    pytest
}

If there is a compiled C extension, the tests need to be run using a $PYTHONPATH, that reflects the current major and minor version of Python in order to find and load it.

check(){
  cd "$pkgname-$pkgver"
  local python_version=$(python -c 'import sys; print(".".join(map(str, sys.version_info[:2])))')
  # For nosetests
  PYTHONPATH="$PWD/build/lib.linux-$CARCH-${python_version}" nosetests

  # For pytest
  PYTHONPATH="$PWD/build/lib.linux-$CARCH-${python_version}" pytest
}

Some projects provide setup.py entry points for running the test. This works for both pytest and nosetests.

check(){
    cd "$srcdir/foo-$pkgver"

    # For nosetests
    python setup.py nosetests

    # For pytest - needs python-pytest-runner
    python setup.py pytest
}

Tips and tricks

Discovering detached PGP signatures on PyPi

If detached PGP signatures for a given Python sdist tarball exist, they should be used to verify the tarball. However, the signature files do not show up directly in the files download section of any given project on pypi.org. To discover the sdist tarballs and their potential signature files, it is possible to use this service to get an overview per project: https://pypi.debian.net/

For python-requests, this would be https://pypi.debian.net/requests.

Using site-packages

Sometimes during building, testing or installation it is required to refer to the system's site-packages directory. To not hardcode the directory, use a call to the system Python version to retrieve the path and store it in a local variable:

check(){
  cd "$pkgname-$pkgver"
  local site_packages=$(python -c "import site; print(site.getsitepackages()[0])")
  ...
}

Test directory in site-package

Make sure to not install a directory named just tests into site-packages (e.g. /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tests/), as it easily conflicts with other Python packages.