Re: Python, poetry, and pandas

[Phil]

Hi Sébastien,

Sébastien Lerique writes:

> Dear all,
>
> (I am aware that python-pandas is packaged for guix, but some packages
> I will need down the road might not be; this project is also in
> collaboration with non guix users, so I am looking for a workflow
> which will work for them too.)
>

Under the covers Poetry is just using regular Python virtualenvs I think.
These don't work well with Guix for a number of reasons - but in my
previous attempts to use them I found that Guix's use of PYTHONPATH
meant that virtualenvs where never isolated from packages installed by
Guix.

Guix offers pretty much everything that virtualenvs offers, but it does
things a little differently - you'll need to look at environments,
profiles, manifests, and use of a guix.scm to recreate (IMHO) a better
experience in the end.

When I started using Guix I went to some lengths to harmonize
virtualenvs and Guix - and others have made more substantial efforts
than I did - but you end up creating as many problems as you fix:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2020-11/msg00237.html

If you search the mail archive a couple of other people have asked
similar questions to do with poetry, pyenv, pip, etc - they're all
interesting reading and easy to grep with those keywords:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/

The advice I was given at the time was don't mix package managers, and
in hindsight I'm glad repackaged what I needed under Guix.

I've packaged quite a few python libraries now, and most are pretty
trivial to do - if they are in PyPi you can just use this:

guix import pypi <package_name>

If you need a later version than Guix provides (eg pandas), my advice is
to use the ability to "inherit" the current definition in Guix and tweak
the version.  For Pandas I did this for a more recent version I needed
and all I had to do was disable 2 unit tests (which failed for a
non-Guix reason).

Apologies - not exactly the answer you want (I have a stab at that
below), but it's worth considering moving to Guix packaging exclusively
to keep your life simple.


>  File
> "/home/sl/.cache/pypoetry/virtualenvs/poetry-test-vOWX4_Vr-py3.8/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/core/window/ewm.py",
> line 9, in <module>
>    import pandas._libs.window.aggregations as window_aggregations
> ImportError: libstdc++.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such
> file or directory

If it's only missing a reference to the underlying C++ library you could
install this library using Guix, or if you're using a foreign distro point to
the non-Guix version under /usr/lib which, at a guess, Poetry may have
picked up - but this is going to cause you more trouble down the line
than repackaging in Guix in my experience.