Is there a command to run a postinstall script only after a source install, and NOT whilst building wheels?

[Avasam]

In mhammond/pywin32#2447 I re-enabled a code path that is meant to only be run after a successful installation of pywin32.
That code path used to be run automatically after non-wheel installs (setup.py install or .exe installers, which are both not supported), given that wheels also don't support postinstall scripts.

It could still be run automatically after an install from source.

However, I noticed that the bdist_wheel command also runs self.run_command("install"). Which makes my changes above fail in the scenario where a wheel is built without immediately installing. (in pywin32's CI this is caught by the cross-compilation workflow, since we can build but not install).

Is there a command or flow I could use to run code when pip install-ing a source distribution/the source, but not when simply building a wheel?

I'm also considering removing that code path entirely, but I wanna make sure I'm not missing anything first.

[abravalheri]

I don't think there is a way of specifying post-install hooks for wheels, as the wheel installation workflow is controlled by pip/uv, and as far as I know, these tools don't provide post-install hooks.

The build process, which is the one controlled by setuptools, has to be generic enough so that it can happen in a separated machine. The install command that runs inside of bdist_wheel merely "installs" the files to a temporary location that is then further zipped into an archive with the .whl extension.

I believe that in the conda ecosystem there might be hooks for post-installs.

[Avasam]

Thanks for your answer!
In mhammond/pywin32#2447 I went for a hack to detect if build was passed on the command line. But I think your answer reinforces that I should probably just drop this legacy code path. So we can stop assuming any installation method will run the postinstall scripts: mhammond/pywin32#2453

I believe that in the conda ecosystem there might be hooks for post-installs.

Indeed, I just looked it up and for reference: https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/dev-guide/plugins/post_commands.html
Last I checked Conda ships its own version of pywin32 (mhammond/pywin32#1865 (comment)) so they can add the hook themselves if they want 😁