Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/bwoodsend/polycotylus

Convert Python packages/applications to native Linux distribution packages.
https://github.com/bwoodsend/polycotylus

alpine archlinux debian fedora linux manjaro packaging python voidlinux

Last synced: 15 days ago
JSON representation

Convert Python packages/applications to native Linux distribution packages.

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
=======================

Welcome to polycotylus!

=======================



∘

`MIT license `_

∘

P̶y̶P̶I

∘

D̶o̶c̶u̶m̶e̶n̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n

∘

`Source code `_

∘

`Bug reports `_



Polycotylus converts Python packages into native Linux distribution packages

such as RPMs or APKs. It builds on each target Linux distribution (thus dodging

the usual Linux nightmare that is ABI compatibility) and uses each

distribution's packaging tool. In the process, it produces a build script which,

if your project is open source, can be submitted upstream so that your package

will become available on official package repositories (although please don't do

this yet – I want to get some review from the distribution maintainers first).



Polycotylus uses Docker to virtualize each Linux distribution and Qemu to

virtualize almost any architecture meaning that you can build for any supported

distribution or architecture from a single machine. You can even build on

Windows or macOS. And you can build apps for Linux phones: running ``polycotylus

manjaro --architecture aarch64`` will build an app installable on a phone

running Manjaro or ``polycotylus alpine --architecture aarch64`` will build a

`postmarketOS `_ compatible app.



Unlike PyInstaller, Flatpaks or Snaps, polycotylus does not bundle dependencies

into your packages – rather dependencies (including Python itself) are declared

as such in the package's metadata where the end user's system package manager

will see and act upon them. This makes the packages tiny, updates modular and

propagation of security patches for vulnerabilities in your dependencies no

longer your problem. Complex system dependencies such as GStreamer or GTK can be

declared in addition to PyPI packages turning them from packaging nightmares

into *just another dependency*. This approach also solves the standard UNIX

question of *should I include libXYZ in my package* to which the answers *yes*

and *no* are often simultaneously wrong.



Polycotylus doesn't just dump your code into an archive and hope for the best –

it verifies it too! It installs your package into a clean, minimal Docker

container and runs your test suite inside of it. Given even a modest test suite,

it should be almost impossible to forget a dependency or miss a data file

without polycotylus letting you know.



For GUI applications, using a system package manager also allows you to add

*desktop integration*. You can register your application so that launch menus

(e.g. Gnome's App tiles) and file browsers know that your application exists,

have icons and descriptions, and are aware of their supported file types.



Supported distributions

.......................



Polycotylus is limited by a hard constraint in that it can not support any

target Linux distribution that does not provide ``setuptools>=61.0`` in its

official package repositories. This unfortunately rules out almost all of the

*stable*/long term support distributions (which also happen to be the most

popular) currently including all stable branches of Debian, Ubuntu <23.04, SLES,

OpenSUSE Leap and all of the RedHat/CentOS-like distributions par Fedora ≥37.

This leaves rolling build distributions and fast releasing distributions with

low latency package repositories.



=============  ===========================================

Distributions  Supported versions

=============  ===========================================

Alpine_        3.17-3.21, edge

Arch_          rolling

Debian_        13 (pre-release)

Fedora_        37-41, 42 (rawhide)

Manjaro_       rolling

O̶p̶e̶n̶S̶U̶S̶E       Redacted due to too many upstream issues

Ubuntu_        24.04-24.10, 25.04 (prerelease)

Void_          rolling

=============  ===========================================



.. _Alpine: https://alpinelinux.org/

.. _Arch: https://archlinux.org/

.. _Debian: https://www.debian.org/

.. _Fedora: https://fedoraproject.org/

.. _Manjaro: https://manjaro.org/

.. _Ubuntu: https://ubuntu.com/

.. _Void: https://voidlinux.org/



Development status

..................



This project is not complete. It is not available on PyPI. To use this project

as it is right now, install ``polycotylus`` from version control (instructions

below). It does have documentation but that documentation is not on readthedocs

– you'll need to build that from source too:



.. code-block:: bash



    git clone [email protected]:bwoodsend/polycotylus

    cd polycotylus

    pip install -e .

    pip install -r docs/requirements.txt

    cd docs

    make html

    xdg-open build/html/index.html



In terms of feature completeness:



* The biggest gaping feature gap is polycotylus's requirement that all your

  dependencies are already available on each target distribution's repositories.

  If your application is made up of multiple custom packages or depends on an

  unavailable 3rd party package then polycotylus is useless to you. For this,

  the plan is to facilitate making personal package repositories, where builds

  for packages can depend on other packages in the personal repository.



Other, less significant but more achievable things I'd like to do:



* Formalise the process for submitting to official package repositories. In

  practice, this should be more about documentation and talking to repository

  maintainers than writing code.



* Custom MIME Type support (i.e. declaring a new made-up file suffix and its

  association with an application).



* See if I can get hardware related functionality (audio, USB) to work with

  Docker.



That said, if you don't need any of the above then polycotylus should work for

you.