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Re: Recommended way of installing system-wide python application and libraries

On Tue, 5 Dec 2023, Ivan Perez wrote:


Hi everyone!

I'm currently trying to bring a tool we have at NASA Ames up to speed:
https://github.com/NASA-SW-VnV/ikos

IKOS is a static analyzer for C. I'm really hoping that IKOS can be included
in Debian in the near future.

IKOS is implemented as a  C++ library, and a number of python
tools/wrappers. The tools call mains in modules defined in a python library
`ikos`.

As of right now, our CMakeFiles attempt to install everything (by default)
under /opt/ikos/.

I'm having lots of issues getting the python portions installed system-wide.
I initially upgraded distutils to setuptools, but a recent update is now
asking that I use a venv. More details and a link to a dockerfile can be
found here: https://github.com/NASA-SW-VnV/ikos/discussions/241.

While I can hack a solution that "works" (either by making a venv under the
target dir or by means of break-system-packages), I'd prefer to use
recommended practices, and also conform to the way that things are done in
Debian/Ubuntu.

What would be the recommended way of installing IKOS system-wide in Debian?


Hello again Ivan (different neighborhood :)),
The "modern" way of building Python libraries/applications seems to be to use a pyproject.toml. The pyproject.toml specifies a backend build system that knows how to build the library/application and produce a wheel.
As far as how to do this within an existing cmake project, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a clear/easy way. The only cmake example I can think off of the top of my head is cvc5. It still uses setup.py though, so not a great future-looking example (and I had to patch it to build the Python bindings in Debian): https://github.com/cvc5/cvc5/blob/main/src/api/python/CMakeLists.txt
If you're open to other options for building python libraries, meson might be something to look into. I haven't used it extensively, though. It does seem to have better support for building Python though. 

Regards,
Scott
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