Streamlining Python Project Builds with Poetry Core

Blake Bradford Avatar

·

Streamlining Python Project Builds with Poetry Core

In the Python development ecosystem, managing dependencies and building projects efficiently is crucial for development productivity. Poetry has emerged as a popular tool for managing Python projects, providing robust dependency management capabilities. However, building Poetry-managed projects using the PEP 517 build backend can be time-consuming and inefficient due to the installation of unnecessary dependencies.

Enter Poetry Core – a lightweight, fully compliant, and self-contained package that serves as a PEP 517 build backend implementation for Poetry. Developed by the Python Poetry team, Poetry Core aims to streamline the build process and eliminate the need for installing Poetry and its dependencies.

The usage of Poetry Core is seamless for end-users, as it is either directly utilized by Poetry itself or integrated with PEP 517 frontends like pip. By including a simple snippet in the project’s pyproject.toml file, developers can enable Poetry Core as the build backend:

toml
[build-system]
requires = ["poetry-core"]
build-backend = "poetry.core.masonry.api"

With Poetry Core integrated, PEP 517 frontends can build and install the project from source efficiently without the additional dependencies of Poetry.

For example, developers can use pip to quickly install the project to their current environment:

shell
pip install /path/to/poetry/managed/project

Or build a wheel package for distribution:

shell
pip wheel /path/to/poetry/managed/project

The motivation behind the creation of Poetry Core was to address the inefficiency and time-consuming nature of PEP 517 builds with Poetry. Prior to version 1.1.0 of Poetry, the project management tool included a PEP 517 build backend. However, this approach resulted in the installation of unnecessary dependencies when the objective was solely to build a source or binary distribution of the project.

To overcome this issue, the Python Poetry team developed Poetry Core as a separate package that focuses specifically on shared functionality related to PEP 517 build backends. Key features include reading pyproject.toml files and building wheel/sdist distributions. By isolating these functionalities into Poetry Core, PEP 517 builds for Poetry-managed packages have become significantly faster and more efficient.

In conclusion, Poetry Core is a valuable tool for Python developers working with Poetry-managed projects. By integrating Poetry Core as the build backend, developers can streamline the build process, eliminate unnecessary dependencies, and improve development productivity. Take advantage of Poetry Core’s capabilities and experience faster PEP 517 builds for your Python projects.

References

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *