[vtkusers] Help building Python wheels for VTK

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 1:46 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:15 AM, David E DeMarle
> <dave.demarle at kitware.com> wrote:
>> Thanks Dave for laying it out.
>>
>> I'll try and steal some of my cycles too, but they likely won't come until
>> the runup to the next release (a month or more from now).
>>
>> We do 1c for paraview and vtkpython binaries. The exact incantations vary
>> per OS. Search for fixup bundle for reference material.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> David E DeMarle
>> Kitware, Inc.
>> R&D Engineer
>> 21 Corporate Drive
>> Clifton Park, NY 12065-8662
>> Phone: 518-881-4909
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 12:07 PM, David Gobbi <david.gobbi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Okay, I've taken a long look at PEP 427 and I have an inkling of how a
>>> python VTK wheel can be built.
>>>
>>> First, a new CMake variable "VTK_BUILD_PYTHON_WHEEL" should be
>>> added, to turn on the wheel-building machinery.  When this variable is
>>> set,
>>> the following should happen:
>>>
>>>
>>> 1) CMake should build a wheel-compatible vtk module directory,
>>> which will differ from the current vtk python module directory in the
>>> following ways:
>>>
>>> 1a) The .py files will not be compiled (no .pyc files)
>>>
>>> 1b) The directory will contain not only the extension modules (i.e.
>>> the .so/.pyd files), but it will also contain all of the VTK runtime
>>> libraries that the extension modules depend on.
>>>
>>> 1c) CMake will have to set the loader paths in all the shared objects
>>> so that they can find each other.
>>>
>>>
>>> 2) After CMake has built the module, the python wheel-building tools
>>> can hopefully do the rest:
>>>
>>> 2a) CMake will check that python has the "wheel" installed
>>>
>>> 2b) the python module directory that CMake built above becomes the
>>> wheel platlib subdir.
>>>
>>> 2c) "wheel" will create all the other necessary files and create the .whl
>>>
>>>
>>> I know how to do 1a and 1b, and can look into 1c (CMake should easily
>>> be able to do it for all platforms).  I probably won't be able to do
>>> any work on this in the immediate future, though.
>>>
>>>  - David
>
> Thanks for looking into this - it would be a huge win to be able to do
> 'pip install vtk'...
>
> If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know,

I just came across this :

https://bitbucket.org/dholth/sdl2_lib/src/tip

It includes a waf script that builds the Python wheel independently of
Python distutils, and is by the main author of the Python wheel
package and format, so it might be a useful inspiration.

Cheers,

Matthew