pythonbuild

This module installs Python from source by downloading it from Python.org and performing an altinstall.

Table of Contents

1. Description
2. Setup – The basics of getting started with pythonbuild
   • Setup requirements
   • Beginning with pythonbuild
3. Usage – Configuration options and additional functionality
4. Limitations – OS compatibility, etc.
5. Development – Guide for contributing to the module

Description

This module downloads Python sources from the configured URL, by default from the FTP directory on Python.org, into a configured directory, be default /usr/local/src'. Afterwards, it configures the build and performs a altinstall` make.

This process will install a binary that can be invoked, for instance, as python3.9.

Setup

Setup Requirements

The module required autoconf, gcc, make and several libraries to be installed. These packages are automatically installed when specified in as $build_dependencies.

Beginning with pythonbuild

The pythonbuild class enables installation of multiple versions. The following installs Python 3.9.6 without any build customisation:

class { 'pythonbuild':
    versions => {
        '3.9.6' => { }
    }
}

Usage

The hash per version can be used to configure phythonbuild::build, most notably you can override the full source path for the download. Furthermore, you can change the target for make, e.g. if you want to perform a system-wide install instead of adding an alternative version. The following specifies what would be the default for Python 3.9.6:

class { 'pythonbuild':
    versions => {
        '3.9.6' => {
            override_url => 'https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.9.6/Python-3.9.6.tgz',
            configure_flags => '--enable-optimizations',
            make_target => 'altinstall'
        }
    }
}

Should you have the need to add additional build depdencies, this is best done via Hiera. The following is the default configuration which is applied to all platforms:

pythonbuild::build_dependencies:
  - gcc
  - make
  - autoconf

If you need to force a rebuild, this can be achieved by deleting the source directory. This is located in /usr/local/src or at the location specified as $source_dir parameter.

Limitations

Only distributions listed in metadata.json are supported.

Development

Open a pull request on GitHub.

Reference

Table of Contents

Classes

• pythonbuild: Installs Python from source.

Defined types

Public Defined types

Private Defined types

• pythonbuild::build: Builds and installs a single version of Python.

Classes

pythonbuild

This module downloads Python sources from python.org and builds and installs the Python interpreter from there.

Parameters

The following parameters are available in the pythonbuild class:

• source_dir
• base_url
• build_dependencies
• versions

source_dir

Data type: String

The directory where to download and extract the sources to.

Default value: '/usr/local/src'

base_url

Data type: String

The base URL where the Python sources are downloaded from. This defaults to the FTP directory on python.org.

Default value: 'https://www.python.org/ftp/python'

build_dependencies

Data type: Array[String]

A list of packages that need to be installed in order to successfully build Python. These dependencies should be specified via Hiera.

versions

Data type: Hash[String, Hash[String, Variant[String, Integer, Boolean]]]

The Python versions to be downloaded and installed. The keys of the hash are the version numbers. The values are a hash holding additional parameters passed to the build process. At the moment, only "override_url" is supported, which forces the download from the specified URL rather than constructing the URL from the base_url and the version string.

Default value: { }

Defined types

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

Release 0.1.0

Features

Bugfixes

Known Issues