Missing package: wxPython

[bennuttall]

Missing package
Package name: wxPython
Link to PyPI page: https://pypi.org/project/wxPython
Link to piwheels page: https://www.piwheels.org/project/wxPython
Version: all

The project's wiki states these as build dependencies:

build-essential tk-dev libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libreadline6-dev libdb5.3-dev libgdbm-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev libbz2-dev libexpat1-dev liblzma-dev zlib1g-dev

https://wxpython.org/blog/2017-08-17-builds-for-linux-with-pip/index.html

[bennuttall]

I've installed these dependencies and kicked off the builders, will see if that's successful.

[bennuttall]

That didn't fix it. It looks like something else is missing.

[bennuttall]

Now following full set of build instructions... this could take a while.

[darrell24015]

wxPython Classic or Phoenix?

I think I'll start with Classic because that's the book that I have on hand for reference.

Upon doing a little research, Classic doesn't look like a good idea. On the piwheels home page, looks like we're building for Python 3.4/3.5. So, wxPython 4.0.3 it is then.

[darrell24015]

Update: first attempt failed - ran out of disk space. I'll have to pick up a 32 GB SD card and move the image over. Hope the next try does better. 🚀

[bennuttall]

On the piwheels home page, looks like we're building for Python 3.4/3.5. So, wxPython 4.0.3 it is then.

Yes, we have Jessie (3.4) and Stretch (3.5) builders. Try on Stretch and then check the package names match on Stretch, or find alternatives. See our deploy script here: https://github.com/bennuttall/piwheels/blob/master/deploy_slave.sh

[darrell24015]

Thanks, Ben. So, just to make sure I'm understanding the process here. I'm doing a build of wxPython 4.0.3 locally following these instructions: https://wiki.wxpython.org/BuildWxPythonOnRaspberryPi - then, once successful, deploy with the bash script you linked above. Seems like I'm missing a piece here, but I'll pick things up as I go.

On a separate note, I've got a cluster built with 5 RPi 2 boards sitting around doing nothing at the moment. Could that be put to gainful use for this project?

[bennuttall]

If you manage to build it successfully, let us know how.

If it's simply a case of missing dependencies from the build script, you can edit the deploy script as a PR. If you had to do more, provide as much detail as possible and we'll see what we can do.

On a separate note, I've got a cluster built with 5 RPi 2 boards sitting around doing nothing at the moment. Could that be put to gainful use for this project?

We use Mythic Beasts' hosted Pi service so we're not in need of any more hardware, but if you want to set up the piwheels service on that you can follow instructions here and try it yourself. If you want a full list of missing packages that haven't been reported you could try and see if you can fix those.

[darrell24015]

Thanks! I was over-thinking it, for sure. I'll continue trying to get a successful build and comment back here again.

[darrell24015]

Build was successful (second attempt with 32 GB SD card). Followed all the steps that I mentioned previously on the wiki.wxpython.org site. I'll look through the deploy script and see if I spot any discrepancies.

[bk-mtg]

I was trying to install this earlier today and found I had to go through a very long build process because there's no wheel in piwheels (all the builds are listed as failing). To get this to work, I ended up doing the following:

1. Install all the following apt packages (listed in two places on the wiki page linked above); didn't try with a subset of them.

    build-essential tk-dev libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libreadline6-dev libdb5.3-dev libgdbm-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev libbz2-dev libexpat1-dev liblzma-dev zlib1g-dev
    dpkg-dev build-essential libjpeg-dev libtiff-dev libsdl1.2-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev libnotify-dev freeglut3 freeglut3-dev
   

   Note that I omitted libwebkitgtk-dev because it seemed like it hopefully shouldn't be needed for our application...

2. Install the python3-dev and python3-pip packages

3. Use pip to install the pathlib2 package, which it doesn't do by default when installing wxPython for some reason

Update: Looks like I probably need to research this a bit more, and that someone else may have installed other software on our Pi here before I tried this out, so I'm no longer sure the steps above are enough. If I get time this week, I'll try to run through another install on a fresh system.

[bk-mtg]

I did some further investigation of this today with a fresh install of Raspbian. It appears to me that the only issue here is that wxPython is currently broken in the latest release in such a way that it requires pathlib2 to build. See wxWidgets/Phoenix#1241 and wxWidgets/Phoenix#1251.

I've created a pull request (piwheels/piwheels#199) that would address this for piwheels, but it's not clear to me whether you'd really want that, or if the better approach is to wait for the upstream project to get their ducks back in a row.

[waveform80]

Since I've re-enabled wxPython we've now got some successful builds. However, the latest 4.1.1 build failed on buster (cp37m). I've had a quick skim of the build output and it looks like a genuine failure (not out of disk space or anything like that); some incompatibility of the wxPython code and the Pi's /opt/vc gl libs. If anyone's interested in digging further into this, feel free to leave a comment and I'll pastebin the build log somewhere but for now I'd consider this "resolved" (given we've got at least some successful builds on both ABIs).