Re: [libgpiod][PATCH v4 1/1] bindings: python: optionally include module in sdist

[Bartosz Golaszewski <brgl@xxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 5:18 PM Phil Howard <phil@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Optionally vendor libgpiod source into sdist so that the
> Python module can be built from source, even with a missing
> or mismatched system libgpiod.
>
> Add optional environment variable "LINK_SYSTEM_LIBGPIOD=1"
> so that the sdist package can optionally be built and
> linked against a compatible system libgpiod.
>
> eg: LINK_SYSTEM_LIBGPIOD=1 pip install libgpiod
>
> Update build to add an additional sdist target for upload
> to pypi. Call setup.py with "GPIOD_VERSION_STR" set, which
> triggers a vendored package build. "GPIOD_VERSION_STR" is
> saved to "gpiod-version-str.txt" and included in the sdist
> for standalone builds.
>
> "GPIOD_VERSION_STR" must be specified in order to produce
> a standalone buildable sdist package, this requirement
> implicitly preserves the old build behaviour.
>
> Signed-off-by: Phil Howard <phil@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---

I just realized one issue with this. Even if we indicate the version
of libgpiod as v2.0.2 using the environment variable but actually
create it from the master branch then the build-in code will really be
the development branch not v2.0.2 stable release.

This is precisely the kind of issue that linking to system lib allows
to avoid. :)

Anyway, maybe we would need an additional environment variable that
could be used to point setup.py to the actual source tree we want to
use, which may be different from the tree we're using to generate the
sdist package? Typically we'd want to release the pypi package with
the most recent stable release of libgpiod.

Bart