Packaging with pip packages

Contribute Room Apps packaging
1

Hello
I’m currently working on the new release of calibre-web.
Although I could just keep the package mainly the way it is, I noticed that calibreweb is now released as a pip package and I was wondering if there were any recommandations regarding the best way to do it for Yunohost:

  • Should I move to install it via pip? If yes, is there any “good practices” (regarding venv, target directory, etc.) ?
  • Or should I keep the “standard” install via github download and manually deal with all the dependencies and so on and stay maybe more aligned with the package philosophy?
  • Or in the end, it does not matter, I’m overthinking it and I can do whatever I want because I’m the king of my castle :crown: :european_castle: !?

Thanks for your feedback!

3 Likes
2

Their recommended practices are definitely sound. Virtual envs are needed to avoid conflicting with Python system packages.

Installation via pip (recommended)

  1. Create a virtual environment for Calibre-Web to avoid conflicts with existing Python dependencies
  2. Install Calibre-Web via pip: pip install calibreweb (or pip3 depending on your OS/distro)
  3. Install optional features via pip as needed, see this page for details
  4. Start Calibre-Web by typing cps

However I’m surprised, the current script already uses pip after downloading the sources:

You should find the balance between maintenance easiness and resources needed for install/upgrade for the end user. :innocent:

1 Like
3

Yes, pip is used to install the python dependencies, but the app itself is just downloaded from the github release assets.
However, since the last release, the maintainer does not release a tar.gz or zip archive as part of the assets anymore (except for the standard source code ones from github) and I was pondering which way to go as it was the occasion to switch.
So I think for now, as long as I can easily download the sources from github, I won’t go for the full pip install, it’s much easier for me!
Thanks for replying!

4

I would suggest to use pip-tools and create a requirements.txt with hashes and pinned version.

e.g.: GitHub - YunoHost-Apps/pyinventory_ynh: YunoHost app package for: https://github.com/jedie/PyInventory i store it into /conf/requirements.txt

5

My helper for this is:

myynh_setup_python_venv() {
    # Always recreate everything fresh with current python version
    ynh_secure_remove "$data_dir/venv"

    # Skip pip because of: https://github.com/YunoHost/issues/issues/1960
    python3 -m venv --without-pip "$data_dir/venv"

    chown -c -R "$app:" "$data_dir"

    # run source in a 'sub shell'
    (
        set +o nounset
        source "$data_dir/venv/bin/activate"
        set -o nounset
        set -x
        ynh_exec_as $app $data_dir/venv/bin/python3 -m ensurepip
        ynh_exec_as $app $data_dir/venv/bin/pip3 install --upgrade wheel pip setuptools
        ynh_exec_as $app $data_dir/venv/bin/pip3 install --no-deps -r "$data_dir/requirements.txt"
    )
}
1 Like
6

As a matter of fact, I think I already reused your code in my scripts :wink:

#Use venv to install pip requirements - Inspired from https://github.com/YunoHost-Apps/pyinventory_ynh/blob/master/scripts/install
ynh_script_progression --message="Installing pip requirements..." --weight=70
# Always recreate everything fresh with current python version
if [ -d "${install_dir}/venv" ] ; then
	ynh_secure_remove "${install_dir}/venv"
fi

# Skip pip because of: https://github.com/YunoHost/issues/issues/1960
python3 -m venv --without-pip "${install_dir}/venv"
chown -R "$app:" "$install_dir"

#run source in a 'sub shell'
(
	set +o nounset
	source "${install_dir}/venv/bin/activate"
	set -o nounset
	ynh_exec_as $app $install_dir/venv/bin/python3 -m ensurepip
	ynh_exec_as $app $install_dir/venv/bin/pip3 install --upgrade wheel pip setuptools
	ynh_exec_as $app $install_dir/venv/bin/pip3 install --no-cache-dir --upgrade -r "$install_dir/requirements.txt"
	ynh_exec_as $app $install_dir/venv/bin/pip3 install --no-cache-dir --upgrade -r "$install_dir/optional-requirements.txt"
)````