Welcome to dh-virtualenv’s documentation!

Contents:

What is dh-virtualenv

dh-virtualenv is a tool that aims to combine Debian packaging with self-contained virtualenv based Python deployments. To do this, the package extends debhelper’s sequence by providing a new command in sequence, dh_virtualenv, which effectively replaces following commands from the sequence:

  • dh_auto_install
  • dh_python2
  • dh_pycentral
  • dh_pysupport

In the sequence the dh_virtualenv is inserted right after dh_perl.

Changelog

Following list contains most notable changes by version. For full list consult the git history of the project.

0.7 (unreleased)

  • Backwards incompatible Support running tests. This change breaks builds that use distutils. For those cases a flag --no-test needs to be passed.
  • Add tutorial to documentation
  • Don’t crash on debbuild parameters -i and -a
  • Support custom source directory (debhelper’s flag -D)

0.6

First public release of dh-virtualenv

Tutorial

This tutorial will guide you through setting up your first project using dh-virtualenv. Having some knowledge on how Debian packages work won’t hurt, but it is not necessary a mandatory requirement. You also need some basic build tools, so it is recommended to install build-essential and devscripts packages.

Step 1: Install dh-virtualenv

In order to use it, you need to install the dh-virtualenv. If you run Debian Jessie (testing), Debian Sid (unstable) or Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty), you can install dh-virtualenv simply with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install dh-virtualenv

For other systems the only way is to build and install it yourself. Steps to do that, after you have cloned the repository are:

sudo apt-get install devscripts python-virtualenv git equivs # Install needed packages
git clone https://github.com/spotify/dh-virtualenv.git       # Clone Git repository
cd dh-virtualenv                                             # Move into the repository
sudo mk-build-deps -ri                                       # This will install build dependencies
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b                                 # Build the *dh-virtualenv* package

# and finally, install it (you might have to solve some
# dependencies when doing this):
sudo dpkg -i ../dh-virtualenv_<version>.deb

Step 2: Setup the Debian packaging

Grab your favourite Python project you want to use dh-virtualenv with and set it up. Only requirement is that your project has a somewhat sane setup.py and requirements listed in a requirements.txt file. Note however that the defining requirements is not mandatory.

Next you need to define the Debian packaging for your software. To do this, create a directory called debian in the project root.

To be able to build a debian package, a few files are needed. First, we need to define the compatibility level of the project. For this, do:

echo "9" > debian/compat

The 9 is a magic number for latest compatibility level, but we don’t need to worry about that. Next we need a file that tells what our project is about, a file called control. Enter a following debian/control file:

Source: my-awesome-python-software
Section: python
Priority: extra
Maintainer: Matt Maintainer <matt@example.com>
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 9), python, dh-virtualenv
Standards-Version: 3.9.5

Package: my-awesome-python-software
Architecture: any
Depends: ${python:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}
Description: really neat package!
 second line can contain extra information about it.

The control file is used to define the build dependencies, so if you are building a package that requires for example lxml, make sure you define libxml2-dev in Build-Depends etc.

Depends in the lower section is used to define run-time dependencies. Following the example above, in case of lxml you would add libxml2 in to the Depends field.

Next, we need a changelog file. It is basically a documentation of changes in your package plus the source for version number for Debian package builder. Here’s a short sample changelog to be entered in debian/changelog:

my-awesome-python-software (0.1-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * Initial public release

 -- Matt Maintainer <matt@example.com>  Fri, 01 Nov 2013 17:00:00 +0200

You don’t need to create this file by hand, a handy tool called dch exists for entering new changelog entries.

Now, last bit is left, which is the debian/rules file. This file is basically a Makefile that Debian uses to build the package. Content for that is fairly straightforward:

#!/usr/bin/make -f

%:
      dh $@ --with python-virtualenv

And there we go, debianization of your new package is ready!

Step 3: Build your project

Now you can just build your project by running dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc. Enjoy your newly baked dh-virtualenv backed project! :)

Building packages with dh-virtualenv

Building packages with dh-virtualenv is relatively easy to start with but it also supports lot of customization to fit in your general needs.

By default, dh-virtualenv installs your packages under /usr/share/python/<packagename>. The package name is provided by the debian/control file.

Simple usecase

To signal debhelper to use dh-virtualenv for building your package, you need to pass --with python-virtualenv to debhelper sequencer.

In a nutshell, the simplest debian/rules file to build using dh-virtualenv looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/make -f

%:
      dh $@ --with python-virtualenv

However, the tool makes a few assumptions of your project’s structure:

  • For installing requirements, you need to have a file called requirements.txt in the root directory of your project. The requirements file is not mandatory.
  • The project must have a setup.py file in the root of the project. Sequencer will run setup.py install to install the package inside the virtualenv.

After these are place, you can just build the package with your favorite tool!

Command line options

To change the default behavior the dh_virtualenv command accepts a few command line options:

-p <package>, --package <package>

Act on the package named <package>

-N <package>, --no-package <package>

Do not act on the specified package

-v, --verbose

Turn on verbose mode. This has a few effects: it sets root logger level to DEBUG and passes verbose flag to pip when installing packages. This can also be provided using the standard DH_VERBOSE environment variable.

--extra-index-url <url>

Use extra index url <url> when running pip to install packages. This can be provided multiple times to pass multiple URLs to pip. This is useful if you for example have a private Python Package Index.

--preinstall <package>

Package to install before processing the requirements. This flag can be used to provide a package that is installed by pip before processing requirements file. This is handy if you need to install for example a custom setup script or other packages needed to parse setup.py. This flag can be provided multiple times to pass multiple packages for pre-install.

--pypi-url <URL>

Base URL of the PyPI server. This flag can be used to pass in a custom URL to a PyPI mirror. It’s useful if you for example have an internal mirror of the PyPI or you run a special instance that only exposes selected packages of PyPI. If this is not provided, the default will be whatever pip uses as default (usually http://pypi.python.org/simple).

--setuptools

Use setuptools instead of distribute in the virtualenv

--no-test

Skip running python setup.py test after dependencies and the package is installed. This is useful if the PYthon code is packaged using distutils and not setuptools.

Advanced usage

To provide command line options to dh_virtualenv sequence the override mechanism of the debhelper is the best tool.

Following debian/rules will provide http://example.com as additional Python Package Index URI:

#!/usr/bin/make -f

%:
      dh $@ --with python-virtualenv

override_dh_virtualenv:
      dh_virtualenv --extra-index-url http://example.com

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