Recently I was working on a very specific task in the current project that I'm
working for Red Hat, the RHEL Lightspeed
ShellAI, this project is
relatively new but we wanted to start shipping development RPMs for our QE
friends to start playing around the tool and testing it in their pipeline.
I know my way around packaging and general python stuff, but man, I have to
tell you, this packaging task took me two entire days to get through. Let me
guide your through the details of the task very quickly.
TLDR; everything worked out at the end and this is the resulting PR:
https://github.com/rhel-lightspeed/shellai/pull/4
Details of the task
The project, ShellAI, is intended ot be shipped under RHEL 9 and the upcoming
RHEL 10. As a bonus target, we would like to get it running also on RHEL 8.
By the statement above, if you already worked with RHEL before, you already
guessed that the challenge will be the version of the dependencies that lives
in RHEL.
- RHEL 8 has Python 3.6
- RHEL 9 has Python 3.9
- and lastly, RHEL 10 has Python 3.12
We also would like to get development builds relatively frequently in order to
getting new features to be tested as we develop the tool.
For the development part, we would like to use
pdm to manage our dependencies and
builds. As we went through the taks we noticed that the pdm backend is not
shipped in the RHEL repositories, thus we went with default setuptools build
backend.
Since our system targets are "relatively new", we would like to modernize the
project and make sure that we are using new tools/structure and formats. For
that, we chose to do with a pyproject.toml, as it is generated via pdm init
when we bootstraped the proejct.
Problems with building the RPM
Initially, our idea was to use the most recent python features and project
structure, such as the pyproject.toml file instead of the legacy setup.py.
When you start a new project, everything is cool and new you get very excited
to use that stuff, the only problem is:
- They are very good for development process, but not for packaging.
Initially, when I began the task, I thought that we could use the new RPM
macros for build the project, since we are using pyproject.toml and pdm for
managing dependencies.
For that, the Fedora Documentation has a nice article called Python Packaging
Guidelines
where they go in details. While the guide covers almost every topic and case
you may need, even with a example
specfile.
With our main target being RHEL, we could imagine that following everything
from the guide would work as-is, right? No. The reason for that lies in the
versions shipped in the RHEL repositories. Even though that the new macros
pointed in the guide may work during the build, you won't be able to generate
the final RPM in the following targets:
- RHEL 8 will throw to you an error during the %generate_buildrequires, as the python3-setuptools version shipped in that release is super old and do not really recognize the new pyproject.toml format.
- RHEL 9 will be able to progress through most of the steps, but will fail %pyproject_wheel as it will build a package with the name UNKNOWN. This is happens because (again) the python3-setuptools shipped under RHEL 9 is old. It doesn't recognize most of the metadata that is generated by the pyproject.toml specf.
The solution
We had to create a legacy
setup.py
file in order to progress with the Python wheel builds, and to avoid data
duplication between the pyproject.toml and our legacy setup.py file, we
used tomllib, because of the
following reasons:
- The tomllib is available (through pypi and rpm packaging) in RHEL 8
- After Python 3.11, tomllib got bundled natively into the standard library
As you have seen above, we used tomllib to load the pyproject.toml file and
read the necessary fields and simply update our legacy setup.py. This way, we
are able to modify pyproject.toml and whenever we push a new build, we will
be able to keep consistency in our legacy setup.py as well.
Regarding the specfile, we had to go back and use what the documentation calls
“201x-era” Python packaging
guidelines.
Essentially, we are using the good old python setup.py build ... command
(through macros, obviously) to build the project.
That solution enabled us to keep consistency across the RHEL versions we want
to support, and, at the same time, keep using pdm and the shiny new features
we would like for development.
The above is the detailed content of Packaging python RPMs. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

Hot AI Tools

Undress AI Tool
Undress images for free

Undresser.AI Undress
AI-powered app for creating realistic nude photos

AI Clothes Remover
Online AI tool for removing clothes from photos.

Clothoff.io
AI clothes remover

Video Face Swap
Swap faces in any video effortlessly with our completely free AI face swap tool!

Hot Article

Hot Tools

Notepad++7.3.1
Easy-to-use and free code editor

SublimeText3 Chinese version
Chinese version, very easy to use

Zend Studio 13.0.1
Powerful PHP integrated development environment

Dreamweaver CS6
Visual web development tools

SublimeText3 Mac version
God-level code editing software (SublimeText3)

Hot Topics

Polymorphism is a core concept in Python object-oriented programming, referring to "one interface, multiple implementations", allowing for unified processing of different types of objects. 1. Polymorphism is implemented through method rewriting. Subclasses can redefine parent class methods. For example, the spoke() method of Animal class has different implementations in Dog and Cat subclasses. 2. The practical uses of polymorphism include simplifying the code structure and enhancing scalability, such as calling the draw() method uniformly in the graphical drawing program, or handling the common behavior of different characters in game development. 3. Python implementation polymorphism needs to satisfy: the parent class defines a method, and the child class overrides the method, but does not require inheritance of the same parent class. As long as the object implements the same method, this is called the "duck type". 4. Things to note include the maintenance

Parameters are placeholders when defining a function, while arguments are specific values ??passed in when calling. 1. Position parameters need to be passed in order, and incorrect order will lead to errors in the result; 2. Keyword parameters are specified by parameter names, which can change the order and improve readability; 3. Default parameter values ??are assigned when defined to avoid duplicate code, but variable objects should be avoided as default values; 4. args and *kwargs can handle uncertain number of parameters and are suitable for general interfaces or decorators, but should be used with caution to maintain readability.

Iterators are objects that implement __iter__() and __next__() methods. The generator is a simplified version of iterators, which automatically implement these methods through the yield keyword. 1. The iterator returns an element every time he calls next() and throws a StopIteration exception when there are no more elements. 2. The generator uses function definition to generate data on demand, saving memory and supporting infinite sequences. 3. Use iterators when processing existing sets, use a generator when dynamically generating big data or lazy evaluation, such as loading line by line when reading large files. Note: Iterable objects such as lists are not iterators. They need to be recreated after the iterator reaches its end, and the generator can only traverse it once.

A class method is a method defined in Python through the @classmethod decorator. Its first parameter is the class itself (cls), which is used to access or modify the class state. It can be called through a class or instance, which affects the entire class rather than a specific instance; for example, in the Person class, the show_count() method counts the number of objects created; when defining a class method, you need to use the @classmethod decorator and name the first parameter cls, such as the change_var(new_value) method to modify class variables; the class method is different from the instance method (self parameter) and static method (no automatic parameters), and is suitable for factory methods, alternative constructors, and management of class variables. Common uses include:

The key to dealing with API authentication is to understand and use the authentication method correctly. 1. APIKey is the simplest authentication method, usually placed in the request header or URL parameters; 2. BasicAuth uses username and password for Base64 encoding transmission, which is suitable for internal systems; 3. OAuth2 needs to obtain the token first through client_id and client_secret, and then bring the BearerToken in the request header; 4. In order to deal with the token expiration, the token management class can be encapsulated and automatically refreshed the token; in short, selecting the appropriate method according to the document and safely storing the key information is the key.

Python's magicmethods (or dunder methods) are special methods used to define the behavior of objects, which start and end with a double underscore. 1. They enable objects to respond to built-in operations, such as addition, comparison, string representation, etc.; 2. Common use cases include object initialization and representation (__init__, __repr__, __str__), arithmetic operations (__add__, __sub__, __mul__) and comparison operations (__eq__, ___lt__); 3. When using it, make sure that their behavior meets expectations. For example, __repr__ should return expressions of refactorable objects, and arithmetic methods should return new instances; 4. Overuse or confusing things should be avoided.

Pythonmanagesmemoryautomaticallyusingreferencecountingandagarbagecollector.Referencecountingtrackshowmanyvariablesrefertoanobject,andwhenthecountreacheszero,thememoryisfreed.However,itcannothandlecircularreferences,wheretwoobjectsrefertoeachotherbuta

Python's garbage collection mechanism automatically manages memory through reference counting and periodic garbage collection. Its core method is reference counting, which immediately releases memory when the number of references of an object is zero; but it cannot handle circular references, so a garbage collection module (gc) is introduced to detect and clean the loop. Garbage collection is usually triggered when the reference count decreases during program operation, the allocation and release difference exceeds the threshold, or when gc.collect() is called manually. Users can turn off automatic recycling through gc.disable(), manually execute gc.collect(), and adjust thresholds to achieve control through gc.set_threshold(). Not all objects participate in loop recycling. If objects that do not contain references are processed by reference counting, it is built-in
