3rd-party python libraries as part of vfx platform

[Chad Dombrova]

Hi all,

Applications often require 3rd-party libraries, which they include in the site-packages of their bundled python directory.  Problems can arise if those library versions are in conflict with the versions required by our pipeline code.  Usually, the application's site-packages comes before paths added via PYTHONPATH, but even if we put ours first by monkeying with sys.path after the application starts, it could have adverse affects.   This sounds like exactly the kind of problem VFX Reference Platform was created to solve!

The libraries that we've had problems with are `six` in Houdini, and `pkg_resources` (setuptools) in Nuke.  The issue is primarily that the bundled versions are quite out of date (I think Nuke's is about 10 years old), so this would be another scenario where the platform is leveraged to keep applications relatively up-to-date.

Has anyone had similar problems?  Is this an issue worth addressing via The Platform?

-chad

[Robert Vinluan]

Hi Chad,

Those sound like application-specific issues and not really widespread versionitis.  It might be worth contacting the vendor (if you haven't already) to help resolve the problems.

In the case of Houdini, the help system has a dependency on the six module and therefore restricts itself to using the six module that ships with Houdini.  However, this restriction may not be necessary.  I might be able to eliminate that restriction in the next Houdini release.  In the meantime, as a workaround, you could try moving the six* files out of $HFS/python/lib/python2.7/site-packages-forced and into $HFS/python/lib/python2.7/site-packages.  That would enable you to introduce a newer six module via PYTHONPATH.  Though if you do use a newer version of six, then best to open Houdini's help to see if it still works.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Rob

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