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Rez is a cross-platform package manager with a difference. Using Rez you can create standalone environments configured for a given set of packages. However, unlike many other package managers, packages are not installed into these standalone environments. Instead, all package versions are installed into a central repository, and standalone environments reference these existing packages. This means that configured environments are lightweight, and very fast to create, often taking just a few seconds to configure dispite containing hundreds of packages.
Typical package managers install packages into an environment
Rez takes a list of package requests, and constructs the target environment, resolving all the necessary package dependencies. Any type of software package is supported - compiled, python, applications and libraries.
Packages are stored in repositories on disk. Each package has a single concise definition file (package.py) that defines its dependencies, its commands (how it configures the environment containing it), and other metadata. For example, the following is the package definition file for the popular requests python module:
name = "requests"
version = "2.8.1"
authors = ["Kenneth Reitz"]
requires = [
"python-2.7+"
]
def commands():
env.PYTHONPATH.append("{root}/python")
This package requires python-2.7 or greater. When used, the 'python' subdirectory within its install location is appended to the PYTHONPATH environment variable.
When an environment is created with the rez API or rez-env tool, a dependency resolution algorithm tracks package requirements and resolves to a list of needed packages. The commands from these packages are concatenated and evaluated, resulting in a configured environment. Rez is able to configure environments containing hundreds of packages, often within a few seconds. Resolves can also be saved to file, and when re-evaluated later will reconstruct the same environment once more.
This example places the user into a resolved shell containing the requested packages:
]$ rez-env requests-2.2+ python-2.6 'pymongo-0+<2.7'
You are now in a rez-configured environment.
resolved by [email protected], on Wed Feb 26 15:56:20 2014, using Rez v2.0.0
requested packages:
requests-2.2+
python-2.6
pymongo-0+<2.7
resolved packages:
python-2.6.8 /software/ext/python/2.6.8
platform-linux /software/ext/platform/linux
requests-2.2.1 /software/ext/requests/2.2.1/python-2.6
pymongo-2.6.3 /software/ext/pymongo/2.6.3
arch-x86_64 /software/ext/arch/x86_64
> ]$ _
This example creates an environment containing the package 'houdini' version 12.5 or greater, and runs the command 'hescape -h' inside that environment:
]$ rez-env houdini-12.5+ -- hescape -h
Usage: hescape [-foreground] [-s editor] [filename ...]
-h: output this usage message
-s: specify starting desktop by name
-foreground: starts process in foreground
Resolved environments can also be created via the API:
>>> import subprocess
>>> from rez.resolved_context import ResolvedContext
>>>
>>> r = ResolvedContext(["houdini-12.5+", "houdini-0+<13", "java", "!java-1.8+"])
>>> p = r.execute_shell(command='which hescape', stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
>>> out, err = p.communicate()
>>>
>>> print out
'/software/ext/houdini/12.5.562/bin/hescape'