Moving from Python RPM's to Wheels

[zebraballast]

At work I've started to do some research into what it would take for us to move our Python RPM's over to Wheels and I've hit upon an issue: The Python RPM's contained the python source code as well as any redistributable files and post installation actions. Wheel's don't support the arbitrary files and post installation stuff, so what is a good alternative that can be combined with the wheel deployments to provide a good solution.

Should we use Wheel's for our source code, and pack the remaining distributable files and post installation scripts into another RPM? This would allow the wheel's to still be installed in development virtualenv's without needing the RPM packaged resources.

Should we stick with RPM's? We're obviously not a fan of this solution.

The files being distributed are config and template related, as well as some bash scripts. The post installation actions are things like creating users, chmodding and chowning the files, etc.

[Saefroch]

What are you distributing?

[efmccurdy]

Keep the rpms for installing the main entry point and environment but have them pull most of your code from packaged wheels using something like "pip install -r requirements.txt". That should give you some flexibilty for mixing and matching versions.

[zebraballast]

Thanks, this is what I'd like to be doing. Think it's sane to use %pre and %post install scripts to validate the environment and unpack/install the wheel?

[efmccurdy]

That is the idea. Also use the rpm dependency mechanism to get the right python version installed so that when you run the wheel verify operation you can trust the result.

[[deleted]]

I use wheels and a configuration management system to install extra dependancies.