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Consider adding build to the "seed" packages #1663
Description
uv venv --seed installs + upgrades setuptools, pip, and wheel, which implies that its purpose is to facilitate distribution package creation. The recent distribution-packaging overhaul over the past few years in the Python world makes build also a critical package. Would you consider adding it to the --seed set?
Reacted by Agriya Khetarpal, HenriBlacksmith, T-256 and Eric Moore
Reacted by Shantanu
Activity
zanieb commentedon Feb 18, 2024
Thanks for the feedback!
Is there another virtual environment tool that does this? Are there issues for this in
venv,virtualenv, or other tools? Generally we'd like to come to decisions like this with a broad consensus in the community.charlesnicholson commentedon Feb 18, 2024
venvdoesn't appear to even installwheel, but I guessvenvis kinda bare-bones (and so very slow).virtualenvappears to only seed some combination ofsetuptools,wheel, andpip: https://virtualenv.pypa.io/en/latest/user_guide.html#seedersYour point about consensus makes total sense, and
uvis fast enough that immediately following a seeded venv creation withuv pip install buildis fine for us. I just figured I'd flag it since it seems likebuildis becoming the de-facto build front-end, and the official Python packaging docs are recommending it.Thanks for reading!
mitsuhiko commentedon Feb 18, 2024
Generally in a perfect world
buildwould never end up in a virtualenv. I went down this path a few times withryealready and the way it works there is that if you invokerye buildit deals withbuildin a completely isolated environment. This is from what I can tell also the way other systems already approach this.For
uvit's in a weird spot right now. Medium term it probably would make sense to have auv buildcommand that triggers the build process, but that might conflict with longer term goals.charlesnicholson commentedon Feb 19, 2024
In our build (mixed C, C++, Python, firmware, host tools, etc) we use the built-in vanilla
venvpackage to create an isolated virtual environment so that the programmer's host OS and developer-specific setup is irrelevant and doesn't influence the build or cause build divergences. We manually bootstrap thesetuptools,wheel,pip, andbuildpackages into that virtual environment, and then our build system has targets for editable package installations, wheel builds / distribution packages, tools that require venv installations (nanopb), etc.I'm curious what you mean about
buildnever needing to end up in a venv! Do you mean thatbuildshould be invoked from the host OS directly, or that Python's build solutions should just be better about isolation in general, or do you mean something else that I'm not understanding yet?Our (initial) use case for
uvis to just have faster-but-still-compatible versions ofvenvandpip installand shave 30+ seconds off of our build. We also like not diverging too far from the slow-but-well-trodden path of standard Python techniques. From your comment, though, it sounds like maybe you're describing a different use case, whereuvends up fully replacingpip, and how that could behave in the future?kvelicka commentedon Feb 19, 2024
buildbuilds stuff by creating a temporary virtualenv, downloading all the build dependencies there and using that to produce the actual artefactsThis means that
builddoesn't need virtualenv but (IMO) that doesn't mean that it can't/shouldn't be installed in a virtualenv anyway - personally I don't think I'd trust any non-first-party package to be installed directly into my system Python,buildincluded.henryiii commentedon Feb 19, 2024
(build maintainer here) I think
uvshould gain abuildsubcommand (I might even help work on that in the near future) - see #1510. The producedure is well documented by PEPs and anyone can implement it, includinguv(technically, it already has it, it mostly just needs a CLI). The primary purpose of--seedwas originally to make a "minimal working environment"; that wassetuptools,wheel, andpip. Nowadays, setuptools and wheel aren't needed anymore, so those are no longer included (for backward compat reasons, only on 3.12+). That leaves only pip, and that's not needed if you useuv's (orpip's) targeting feature.I don't think
buildis ever intended to be part of a minimal working environment. It's only useful if you need to build wheels or SDists and not everyone needs to do that.By the way, pip/uv do this too, and all three allow you turn this off by turning off build isolation. And build is just as much or as little of a third-party tool as pip or virtualenv is, all of them are PyPA projects.
Implement `uv build` (astral-sh#6895)