RPM on PyPI

[nforro]

There is a dummy RPM package on PyPI that intentionally fails to install.
I'm wondering if a shim module similar to selinux wouldn't be beneficial. It would replace itself with system RPM module after import or raise an error stating that one needs to install RPM python bindings on their system. What do you think?

[TomasTomecek]

This would be an improvement to the existing workflow where folks outside of rpm-based distros can't even install the tooling.

[pmatilai]

We don't know anything about that dummy package, but in general we don'tr really want rpm on Pypi, it's not well suited to that.

[nforro]

in general we don'tr really want rpm on Pypi, it's not well suited to that

And would you mind if we (the @packit team) created and maintained such shim module?

[pmatilai]

I'm not sure I understand the case for this shim, but it doesn't sound particularly harmful (whereas trying to make actual rpm bindings available in PyPi is). So I guess that means "no we don't mind".

[nforro]

Thank you. The way I see it, the benefits of this shim module are:

• we can declare dependency on rpm while keeping our projects installable with pip, which also allows us to take advantage of automatic dependency generators without any hacks
• thanks to the shim, our projects can be installed and run in virtualenvs, using system rpm module

[TomasTomecek]

I can see it's Nick Coghlan who maintains that namespace, I believe we should reach out to him and discuss this. Thank you for your response, Panu!

[hroncok]

See also https://pypi.org/project/rpm-py-installer/

[TomasTomecek]

Actually rpm-py-installer triggered this conversation: packit/specfile#187

[hroncok]

Note that if this is ready #2345 -- the rpm shim should be able to copy/link the _rpm extension module from the python3-rpm RPM package to virtual environments using different (well, probably just newer) Python versions.

[nforro]

That would be great and it would pretty much eliminate the need for rpm-py-installer, at least on rpm-based systems.

[thrix]

@nforro @hroncok @TomasTomecek thanks for the discussion, so this is blocked on #2345 ?

We hit this again with new pip, and need to stick to pip < 23.1, where even the old does not install anymore ;(

https://gitlab.com/testing-farm/gluetool-modules/-/merge_requests/438/diffs

[nforro]

No, specfile now depends on the shim module rather than rpm-py-installer.

[thrix]

maybe to late for me, I have issues with rpm-py-installer, I thought then I need to go back to cry to rpm-py-installer/rpm-py-installer#260 :)

[nforro]

You need it for koji? Couldn't they also switch to the shim module?

[thrix]

nope, our own tooling, gluetool, let us try shim, I was not aware it exists