How to install pyvista with vtk_osmesa?

[nknavasto]

I am building a wheel for my python package and would like to include pyvista as a dependency. However, this wheel is supposed to be running on a headless environment. So instead of vtk as its dependency, I would like to use vtk_osmesa instead.

My current approach is to

• checkout pyvista
• change the settings in pyproject.toml
• compile a pyvista_osmesa package
• upload that package to my own python package index and
• specify pyvista_osmesa as a dependency.

My questions in this board are:

1. Is there a way to specify pyvista as a dependency and use vtk_osmesa instead?
2. Is my current approach violating any license terms?

[MatthewFlamm]

I think trying to maintain a customized version of pyvista will be a lot of work and pain in the long run. Does this recommendation work for you? https://discourse.vtk.org/t/status-update-vtk-python-wheels/11212

pip install pyvista  # use local cloned copy if you need it
pip uninstall vtk -y
pip install --extra-index-url https://wheels.vtk.org vtk-osmesa

Unfortunately, this requires installing vtk, uninstalling it, then installing vtk-osmesa. This problem occurs, in my view, because Python does not allow having a default optional dependency. Another factor is that Kitware has decided to rename the package `vtk-osmesa

[MatthewFlamm]

I understand what you are trying to do now, thanks for the added info. This is a tricky one.

Would it be possible to make vtk as an optional dependency? In the requirements.txt file, it is already excluded!

The problem in your suggestion is that for pyvista only users this won't work: pip install pyvista. We would need pip install pyvista[vtk]. As you are afraid of users having to execute multiple lines, it is too much to ask users to use an optional dependency for the default usage in my opinion. It is a hard problem.

One thought that might be a lot of burden here is to have a separate pyvista-osmesa package just like vtk has separate packages.

[MatthewFlamm]

One more though on having a separate pyvista-osmesa package is that you'd have to specify a separate wheel location for vtk-osmesa since it is not available on pypi. So users would still have to do something like pip install pyvista-osmesa --extra-index-url https://wheels.vtk.org. It is still not ideal.

[nknavasto]

That is all correct what you are mentioning. Currently, I would add the requirement in my setup.py as follows:

setup(
...
install_requires=["pyvista_osmesa @ https: ..."]
)

This has the drawback, that an installation based on local python wheels (without internet access) is not possible any longer.

My favorite solution would be for you to provide a build with pyvista-osmesa, just like vtk is doing. Do you thing there is a chance for you to do that? I think the build pipeline would only have to be altered minimally (change the name of the package and the vtk dependency).

[banesullivan]

+1 to everything @MatthewFlamm has said here

Though I do want to add that I have some build configurations that make building and maintaining your own wheel for VTK quite easy and this is what I do these days. Check out https://github.com/banesullivan/vtk-cmake

[jules-l-jimmy]

Hi,
Will something like pip install pyvista-osmesa --extra-index-url https://wheels.vtk.org be integrated in the code as mentioned by @MatthewFlamm ?

Would appreciate to have a way to add a pyvista with vtk-osmesa to a requirements file

Thank you