How to reuse Python code in recipes

Warning

To reuse Python code, from Conan 1.7 there is a new python_requires() feature. See: Python requires: reusing Python code in recipes This “how to” might be deprecated and removed in the future. It is left here for reference only.

First, if you feel that you are repeating a lot of Python code, and that repeated code could be useful for other Conan users, please propose it in a github issue.

There are several ways to handle Python code reuse in package recipes:

  • To put common code in files, as explained below. This code has to be exported into the recipe itself.

  • To create a Conan package with the common Python code, and then require it from the recipe.

This howto explains the latter.

A basic Python package

Let’s begin with a simple Python package, a “hello world” functionality that we want to package and reuse:

def hello():
    print("Hello World from Python!")

To create a package, all we need to do is create the following layout:

-| hello.py
 | __init__.py
 | conanfile.py

The __init__.py is blank. It is not necessary to compile code, so the package recipe conanfile.py is quite simple:

from conans import ConanFile

class HelloPythonConan(ConanFile):
    name = "hello_py"
    version = "0.1"
    exports = '*'
    build_policy = "missing"

    def package(self):
        self.copy('*.py')

    def package_info(self):
        self.env_info.PYTHONPATH.append(self.package_folder)

The exports will copy both the hello.py and the __init__.py into the recipe. The package() method is also obvious: to construct the package just copy the Python sources.

The package_info() adds the current package folder to the PYTHONPATH Conan environment variable. It will not affect the real environment variable unless the end user desires it.

It can be seen that this recipe would be practically the same for most Python packages, so it could be factored in a PythonConanFile base class to further simplify it. (Open a feature request, or better a pull request. :) )

With this recipe, all we have to do is:

$ conan export . memsharded/testing

Of course if you want to share the package with your team, you can conan upload it to a remote server. But to create and test the package, we can do everything locally.

Now the package is ready for consumption. In another folder, we can create a conanfile.txt (or a conanfile.py if we prefer):

[requires]
hello_py/0.1@memsharded/testing

And install it with the following command:

$ conan install . -g virtualenv

Creating the above conanfile.txt might be unnecessary for this simple example, as you can directly run conan install hello_py/0.1@memsharded/testing -g virtualenv, however, using the file is the canonical way.

The specified virtualenv generator will create an activate script (in Windows activate.bat), that basically contains the environment, in this case, the PYTHONPATH. Once we activate it, we are able to find the package in the path and use it:

$ activate
$ python
Python 2.7.12 (v2.7.12:d33e0cf91556, Jun 27 2016, 15:19:22) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
...
>>> import hello
>>> hello.hello()
Hello World from Python!
>>>

The above shows an interactive session, but you can import also the functionality in a regular Python script.

Reusing Python code in your recipes

Requiring a Python Conan package

As the Conan recipes are Python code itself, it is easy to reuse Python packages in them. A basic recipe using the created package would be:

from conans import ConanFile

class HelloPythonReuseConan(ConanFile):
    requires = "hello_py/0.1@memsharded/testing"

    def build(self):
        from hello import hello
        hello()

The requires section is just referencing the previously created package. The functionality of that package can be used in several methods of the recipe: source(), build(), package() and package_info(), i.e. all of the methods used for creating the package itself. Note that in other places it is not possible, as it would require the dependencies of the recipe to be already retrieved, and such dependencies cannot be retrieved until the basic evaluation of the recipe has been executed.

$ conan install .
...
$ conan build .
Hello World from Python!

Sharing a Python module

Another approach is sharing a Python module and exporting within the recipe.

Let’s write for example a msgs.py file and put it besides the conanfile.py:

def build_msg(output):
    output.info("Building!")

And then the main conanfile.py would be:

from conans import ConanFile
from msgs import build_msg

class ConanFileToolsTest(ConanFile):
    name = "test"
    version = "1.9"
    exports = "msgs.py"  # Important to remember!

    def build(self):
        build_msg(self.output)
        # ...

It is important to note that such msgs.py file must be exported too when exporting the package, because package recipes must be self-contained.

The code reuse can also be done in the form of a base class, something like a file base_conan.py

from conans import ConanFile

class ConanBase(ConanFile):
    # common code here

And then:

from conans import ConanFile
from base_conan import ConanBase

class ConanFileToolsTest(ConanBase):
    name = "test"
    version = "1.9"
    exports = "base_conan.py"