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. Exporting the variable DH_VIRTUALENV_INSTALL_ROOT=</your/custom/install/dir> will set the install path for your package if you don’t wish to use the default path.

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).

--extra-pip-arg <PIP ARG>¶: Extra parameters to pass to the pip executable. This is useful if you need to change the behaviour of pip during the packaging process. You can use this flag multiple times to pass in different pip flags. As an example passing in –extra-pip-arg “–no-compile” to the override_dh_virtualenv section of the debian/rules file will disable the generation of pyc files.

--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.

--python <path>¶: Use a specific Python interpreter found in path as the interpreter for the virtualenv. Default is to use the system default, usually /usr/bin/python.

--builtin-venv¶: Enable the use of the build-in venv module, i.e. use python -m venv to create the virtualenv. For this to work, requires Python 3.4 or later to be used, e.g. by using the option --python /usr/bin/python3.4. (Python 3.3 has the venv module, but virtualenvs created with Python 3.3 are not bootstrapped with setuptools or pip.)

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