tox-poetry-installer

A plugin for Tox that allows test environment dependencies to be installed using Poetry from its lockfile.

⚠️ This project is alpha software and should not be used in production environments ⚠️

Documentation

• Installation
• Quick Start
• Plugin Usage
• Reference
  • Configuration Options
  • Command-line Arguments
  • Errors
  • Advanced Usage
• Why would I use this? (What problems does this solve?)
• Developing
• Contributing
• Roadmap
  • Path to Beta
  • Path to Stable

Related resources:

• Poetry Python Project Manager
• Tox Automation Project
• Poetry Dev-Dependencies Tox Plugin
• Poetry Tox Plugin
• Other Tox plugins

Installation

Add the plugin as a development dependency of a Poetry project:

~ $: poetry add tox-poetry-installer --dev

Confirm that the plugin is installed, and Tox recognizes it, by checking the Tox version:

~ $: poetry run tox --version
3.20.0 imported from .venv/lib64/python3.8/site-packages/tox/__init__.py
registered plugins:
    tox-poetry-installer-0.5.0 at .venv/lib64/python3.8/site-packages/tox_poetry_installer.py

If using Pip, ensure that the plugin is installed to the same environment as Tox:

# Calling the virtualenv's 'pip' binary directly will cause pip to install to that virtualenv
~ $: /path/to/my/automation/virtualenv/bin/pip install tox
~ $: /path/to/my/automation/virtualenv/bin/pip install tox-poetry-installer

Note: While it is possible to install this plugin using Tox's requires configuration option, it is not recommended. Dependencies from the requires option are installed using the default Tox installation backend which opens up the possibility of transient dependency problems in your automation environment.

Quick Start

To add dependencies from the lockfile to a Tox environment, add the option locked_deps to the environment configuration and list names of dependencies (with no version specifier) under it:

[testenv]
description = Some very cool tests
locked_deps =
    black
    pylint
    mypy
commands = ...

The standard deps option can be used in parallel with the locked_deps option to install unlocked dependencies (dependencies not in the lockfile) alongside locked dependencies:

[testenv]
description = Some very cool tests
locked_deps =
    black
    pylint
    mypy
deps =
    pytest == 6.1.1
    pytest-cov >= 2.10, <2.11
commands = ...

Alternatively, to quickly install all Poetry dev-dependencies to a Tox environment, add the install_dev_deps = true option to the environment configuration.

Note: Regardless of the settings outlined above, all dependencies of the project package (the one Tox is testing) will always be installed from the lockfile.

Reference

Configuration Options

All options listed below are Tox environment options and can be applied to one or more environment sections of the tox.ini file. They cannot be applied to the global Tox configuration section.

NOTE: Environment settings applied to the main testenv environment will be inherited by child environments (i.e. testenv:foo) unless they are explicitly overridden by the child environment's configuration.

locked_deps

• Type: multi-line list
• Default: []

Names of packages in the Poetry lockfile to install to the Tox environment. All dependencies specified here will be installed to the Tox environment using the details given by the Poetry lockfile.

require_locked_deps

• Type: boolean
• Default: false

Whether the environment should allow unlocked dependencies (dependencies not in the Poetry lockfile) to be installed alongside locked dependencies. If true then an error will be raised if the environment specifies unlocked dependencies to install and the plugin will block any other plugins from using the tox_testenv_install_deps hook.

install_dev_deps

• Type: boolean
• Default: false

Whether all Poetry dev-dependencies should be installed to the environment. If true then all dependencies specified in the dev-dependencies section of pyproject.toml will be installed automatically.

Command-line Arguments

All arguments listed below can be passed to the tox command to modify runtime behavior of the plugin.

--require-poetry

Indicates that Poetry is expected to be available to Tox and, if it is not, then the Tox run should fail. If provided and the poetry package is not installed to the same environment as the tox package then Tox will fail.

NOTE: See Advanced Usage for more information.

Errors

If the plugin encounters an error while processing a Tox environment then it will mark the environment as failed and set the environment status to one of the values below:

NOTE: In addition to the reasons noted below, the plugin can encounter errors if the Poetry lockfile is not up-to-date with pyproject.toml. To resynchronize the lockfile with the pyproject.toml run one of poetry update or poetry lock

Poetry Not Installed Error

• Status value: PoetryNotInstalledError
• Cause: Indicates that the poetry module could not be imported from the same environment as the running tox module and the runtime flags specified --require-poetry.
• Resolution options:
  • Install Poetry: ensure that poetry is installed to the same environment as tox.
  • Skip running the plugin: remove the --require-poetry flag from the runtime options.

NOTE: See Advanced Usage for more information.

Locked Dependency Version Conflict Error

• Status value: LockedDepVersionConflictError
• Cause: Indicates that a dependency specified in the locked_deps configuration option in tox.ini includes a PEP-508 version specifier (i.e. pytest >=6.0, <6.1).
• Resolution options:
  • Use the dependency version from the lockfile: remove any/all version specifiers from the item in the locked_deps list in tox.ini.
  • Do not install the dependency: remove the item from the locked_deps list in tox.ini.

Locked Dependency Not Found Error

• Status value: LockedDepNotFoundError
• Cause: Indicates that a dependency specified in the locked_deps configuration option in tox.ini could not be found in the Poetry lockfile.
• Resolution options:
  • Add the dependency to the lockfile: run poetry add <dependency>; see the Poetry documentation for more information.
  • Do not install the dependency: remove the item from the locked_deps list in tox.ini.

Extra Not Found Error

• Status value: ExtraNotFoundError
• Cause: Indicates that the extras configuration option specified a setuptools extra that is not configured by Poetry in pyproject.toml
• Resolution options:
  • Configure the extra: add a section for the named extra to the extras section of pyproject.toml and optionally assign dependencies to the named extra using the --optional dependency setting.
  • Remove the extra: remove the item from the extras list in tox.ini.

Locked Dependencies Required Error

• Status value: LockedDepsRequiredError
• Cause: Indicates that an environment with the require_locked_deps configuration option also specified unlocked dependencies using deps option in tox.ini.
• Resolution options:
  • Remove all unlocked dependencies: remove the deps configuration option in tox.ini.
  • Allow unlocked dependencies: remove the require_locked_deps configuration option in tox.ini or explicitly set require_locked_deps = false.

Advanced Usage

Unsupported Tox configuration options

The tox.ini configuration options listed below have no effect on the dependencies installed by this plugin the Poetry lockfile. Note that these settings will still be applied by the default Tox installation backend when installing unlocked dependencies using the built-in deps option.

• install_command
• pip_pre
• download
• indexserver
• usedevelop

All of these options are obsoleted by using the Poetry backend. If a given package installs successfully using Poetry (using either poetry add <package> or poetry install) then the required configuration options are already properly set in the Poetry configuration and the plugin will automatically use the same settings when installing the package.

Reinstalling locked dependencies to a Tox environment

Updating the poetry.lock file will not automatically cause Tox to install the updated lockfile specifications to the Tox environments that specify them.

The Tox environment(s) with updated locked dependencies must be deleted and recreated using the --recreate runtime flag. Alternatively Tox can be configured to always recreate an environment by setting the recreate option in tox.ini.

Installing Poetry's unsafe dependencies

There are several packages that cannot be installed from the lockfile because they are excluded by Poetry itself. As a result these packages cannot be installed by this plugin either as environment dependencies (passed directly to locked_deps) or as transient dependencies (a dependency of a locked dependency).

As of Poetry-1.1.4 there are four packages classified as "unsafe" by Poetry and excluded from the lockfile:

• setuptools
• distribute
• pip
• wheel

When one of these packages is encountered by the plugin a warning will be logged and the package will not be installed to the environment. If the unsafe package is required for the environment then it will need to be specified as an unlocked dependency using the deps configuration option in tox.ini, ideally with an exact pinned version.

• The set of packages excluded from the Poetry lockfile can be found at poetry.puzzle.provider.Provider.UNSAFE_DEPENDENCIES
• There is an ongoing discussion of Poetry's handling of these packages at python-poetry/poetry#1584

Installing alongside an existing Poetry installation

The plugin specifies the poetry package as an optional dependency to support an externally managed Poetry installation such as in a container or CI environment. This gives greater flexibility when using Poetry arguments like --no-root, --no-dev, or --remove-untracked which can cause Poetry to uninstall itself if Poetry is specified as a dependency of one of the packages it is managing (like this plugin).

To have the plugin use the externally-managed Poetry package simply do not install the poetry extra when installing this plugin:

# Installing Poetry as a dependency with the plugin
poetry add tox-poetry-installer[poetry]

# Relying on an externally managed Poetry installation
poetry add tox-poetry-installer

Note that Poetry is an optional dependency to support this use case only: Poetry must be installed to the same environment as Tox for the plugin to function. To check that the local environment has all of the required modules in scope run the below command:

python -c '\
  import tox;\
  import tox_poetry_installer;\
  from poetry.poetry import Poetry;\
'

NOTE: To force Tox to fail if Poetry is not installed, run the tox command with the --require-poetry option.

Why would I use this?

Introduction

The lockfile is a file generated by a package manager for a project that records what dependencies are installed, the versions of those dependencies, and any additional metadata that the package manager needs to recreate the local project environment. This allows developers to have confidence that a bug they are encountering that may be caused by one of their dependencies will be reproducible on another device. In addition, installing a project environment from a lockfile gives confidence that automated systems running tests or performing builds are using the same environment as a developer.

Poetry is a project dependency manager for Python projects, and so it creates and manages a lockfile so that its users can benefit from all the features described above. Tox is an automation tool that allows Python developers to run tests suites, perform builds, and automate tasks within self-contained Python virtual environments. To make these environments useful Tox supports installing dependencies in each environment. However, since these environments are created on the fly and Tox does not maintain a lockfile, there can be subtle differences between the dependencies a developer is using and the dependencies Tox uses.

This is where this plugin comes into play.

By default Tox uses Pip to install the PEP-508 compliant dependencies to a test environment. This plugin extends the default Tox dependency installation behavior to support installing dependencies using a Poetry-based installation method that makes use of the dependency metadata from Poetry's lockfile.

The Problem

Environment dependencies for a Tox environment are usually specified in PEP-508 format, like the below example:

# from tox.ini
...

[testenv]
description = Some very cool tests
deps =
    foo == 1.2.3
    bar >=1.3,<2.0
    baz

...

Let's assume these dependencies are also useful during development, so they can be added to the Poetry environment using this command:

poetry add --dev \
   foo==1.2.3 \
   bar>=1.3,<2.0 \
   baz

However there is a potential problem that could arise from each of these environment dependencies that would only appear in the Tox environment and not in the Poetry environment in use by a developer:

• The foo dependency is pinned to a specific version: let's imagine a security vulnerability is discovered in foo and the maintainers release version 1.2.4 to fix it. A developer can run poetry remove foo and then poetry add foo^1.2 to get the new version, but the Tox environment is left unchanged. The development environment, as defined by the lockfile, is now patched against the vulnerability but the Tox environment is not.

• The bar dependency specifies a dynamic range: a dynamic range allows a range of versions to be installed, but the lockfile will have an exact version specified so that the Poetry environment is reproducible; this allows versions to be updated with poetry update rather than with the remove and add commands used above. If the maintainers of bar release version 1.6.0 then the Tox environment will install it because it is valid for the specified version range. Meanwhile the Poetry environment will continue to install the version from the lockfile until poetry update bar explicitly updates it. The development environment is now has a different version of bar than the Tox environment.

• The baz dependency is unpinned: unpinned dependencies are generally a bad idea, but here it can cause real problems. Poetry will interpret an unbound dependency using the carrot requirement but Pip (via Tox) will interpret it as a wildcard. If the latest version of baz is 1.0.0 then poetry add baz will result in a constraint of baz>=1.0.0,<2.0.0 while the Tox environment will have a constraint of baz==*. The Tox environment can now install an incompatible version of baz and any errors that causes cannot be replicated using poetry update.

All of these problems can apply not only to the dependencies specified for a Tox environment, but also to the dependencies of those dependencies, those dependencies' dependencies, and so on.

The Solution

This plugin allows dependencies specified in Tox environment take their version directly from the Poetry lockfile without needing an independent version to be specified in the Tox environment configuration. The modified version of the example environment given below appears less stable than the one presented above because it does not specify any versions for its dependencies:

# from tox.ini
...

[testenv]
description = Some very cool tests
require_locked_deps = true
locked_deps =
    foo
    bar
    baz

...

However with the tox-poetry-installer plugin installed the require_locked_deps = true setting means that Tox will install these dependencies from the Poetry lockfile so that the version installed to the Tox environment exactly matches the version Poetry is managing. When poetry update updates the lockfile with new versions of these dependencies, Tox will automatically install these new versions without needing any changes to the configuration.

Developing

This project requires a developer to have Poetry version 1.0+ installed on their workstation, see the installation instructions here.

# Clone the repository...
# ...over HTTPS
git clone https://github.com/enpaul/tox-poetry-installer.git
# ...over SSH
git clone git@github.com:enpaul/tox-poetry-installer.git

# Create a the local project virtual environment and install dependencies
cd tox-poetry-installer
poetry install

# Install pre-commit hooks
poetry run pre-commit install

# Run tests and static analysis
poetry run tox

Contributing

All project contributors and participants are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct, Version 2.

The devel branch has the latest (potentially unstable) changes. The tagged versions correspond to the releases on PyPI.

• To report a bug, request a feature, or ask for assistance, please open an issue on the Github repository.
• To report a security concern or code of conduct violation, please contact the project author directly at ethan dot paul at enp dot one.
• To submit an update, please fork the repository and open a pull request.

Roadmap

This project is under active development and is classified as alpha software, not yet ready for usage in production environments.

• Beta classification will be assigned when the initial feature set is finalized
• Stable classification will be assigned when the test suite covers an acceptable number of use cases

Path to Beta

• Verify that primary package dependencies (from the .package env) are installed correctly using the Poetry backend.
• Support the extras Tox configuration option (#4)
• Add per-environment Tox configuration option to fall back to default installation backend.
• Add warnings when an unsupported Tox configuration option is detected while using the Poetry backend. (#5)
• Add trivial tests to ensure the project metadata is consistent between the pyproject.toml and the module constants.
• Update to use poetry-core and improve robustness of the Tox and Poetry module imports to avoid potentially breaking API changes in upstream packages. (#2)
• Find and implement a way to mitigate the UNSAFE_DEPENDENCIES issue in Poetry. (#6)
• Fix logging to make proper use of Tox's logging reporter infrastructure (#3)
• Add configuration option for installing all dev-dependencies to a testenv (#14)

Path to Stable

Everything in Beta plus...

• Add tests for each feature version of Tox between 2.3 and 3.20
• Add tests for Python-3.6, 3.7, and 3.8
• Add Github Actions based CI
• Add CI for CPython, PyPy, and Conda
• Add CI for Linux and Windows