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Install sudo and pg_config

#144

os-linux
There seems to an issue using sudo when installing from source or pip. setup.py complains that pg_config cannot be found on the path.
Checking the PATH shows that the directory for pg_config is indeed there.

My usual install is:

python setup.py build

This runs and the code finds the appropriate directories to build against.

sudo python setup.py install

This is where I get the error. 
Doing:
    sudo python setup.py build_ext --pg-config /path/to/pg_config install     
makes it complete.

If I try

sudo python setup.py build

it also fails.

If I sudo su - to root then I can do the build and install with no problem.

Something about sudo as a regular user is causing an issue.

Reported by Adrian Klaver · December 29th, 2012 @ 11:05 PM

Activity

Daniele Varrazzo
Of course it does. PATH is an env variable: root may have a different one from your regular user.

Yes, pg_config should not be required for installing. I can try if we can look for pg_config lazily in setup.py, but wouldn't be surprised if it fails: distutils is not that straightforward.

Will look into this in the next days (unless you want to provide a patch, e.g. making pg_config_exe a lazy attribute).

December 30th, 2012 @ 08:33 AM
Adrian Klaver
The PATH for root also contains the pg_config directory. As I said in the original problem report, when I run build/install entirely as root there is no problem. It is the usage of sudo that cause the issue.

December 30th, 2012 @ 03:47 PM
Adrian Klaver
Have been doing some digging around.
What I found so far.
In the sudoers file there in a setting env_reset that restricts the PATH when using sudo. There are other settings that affect PATH also and I don't think I will touch any of them.

This I can see if I:
```
print os.environ['PATH']
```
in
```
def find_on_path()
```
So the root or user PATH do not apply.

This led me to the wonderful world that is distutils.
Just ran across this article which is proving helpful:
http://www.python.org/files/sigs/sc_submission.html
With what I have learned from it so far, I started stepping through the build/install process.
The PATH error crops up in the build_ext stage. The install command steps through that on its way to actually doing the install.
Now I have to figure out how to handle that.
December 30th, 2012 @ 10:13 PM
Adrian Klaver
Seems this is where the problem arises:

def finalize_options(self):
```
    """Complete the build system configuation."""
    build_ext.finalize_options(self)

    pg_config_helper = PostgresConfig(self)
```
PostgresConfig() gets re-instantiated for each pass through build_ext.

Have not figured it out yet, but the solution would seem to be to instantiate it outside the build_ext mechanism and then pass in the values found by pg_config_helper.
December 30th, 2012 @ 10:39 PM
Adrian Klaver
Well that is not going to work. The various steps seem to take place as discrete actions with no state saved. I thought of using the pg_config setting in setup.cfg as a way of preserving state. The thing is I can not see where that setting is read in by the parser. The same goes for the include_dirs settings. Am I missing something? Still might experiment with that route, just want to make sure I am not stomping on some other process.

December 31st, 2012 @ 03:33 AM
Adrian Klaver
I am afraid the previous idea would not work for the case:

sudo python setup.py install

As soon as sudo is invoked the PATH gets restricted.
My personal short term solution is to put the following in ~/.bashrc

alias sudo='sudo env PATH=$PATH'

This adds the regular user PATH to the sudo path temporarily.
To make this happen in the script would involve invoking a process as the regular user to collect the ENV variables.
Not sure I am up to that yet.

December 31st, 2012 @ 03:59 PM

Daniele Varrazzo

State changed from new to hold
Tag set to distutils_is_a_mess, setup

I have tried making pg_config_exe a lazy property, but as you have noticed, build_ext is invoked even if only install is asked for and no build is required.

piro@risotto:~/src/psycopg2$ python setup.py install --root=tmp
running install
running build
running build_py
running build_ext
running install_lib
...

Even making the property lazy with this patch:

diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 3791c14..7db1396 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -83,11 +83,19 @@ PLATFORM_IS_WINDOWS = sys.platform.lower().startswith('win')
 class PostgresConfig:
     def __init__(self, build_ext):
         self.build_ext = build_ext
-        self.pg_config_exe = self.build_ext.pg_config
-        if not self.pg_config_exe:
-            self.pg_config_exe = self.autodetect_pg_config_path()
-        if self.pg_config_exe is None:
-            sys.stderr.write("""\
+
+    @property
+    def pg_config_exe(self):
+        try:
+            return self._pg_config_exe
+        except AttributeError:
+            pass
+
+        self._pg_config_exe = self.build_ext.pg_config
+        if not self._pg_config_exe:
+            self._pg_config_exe = self.autodetect_pg_config_path()
+        if self._pg_config_exe is None:
+            raise Exception("""\
 Error: pg_config executable not found.

 Please add the directory containing pg_config to the PATH
@@ -99,6 +107,8 @@ or with the pg_config option in 'setup.cfg'.
 """)
             sys.exit(1)

+        return self._pg_config_exe
+
     def query(self, attr_name):
         """Spawn the pg_config executable, querying for the given config
         name, and return the printed value, sanitized. """

the error is just moved from the PostgresConfig constructor to the pg_config_helper.query("libdir") below.

I don't see a way to detect build_ext has no work to do before finalize_options() is invoked and I'm not up to the distutils rabbit hole either. So I'll leave the ticket around just in case somebody feels this problem deserves a solution and shows such solution exists.

January 9th, 2013 @ 04:10 PM

Adrian Klaver
Thanks for looking at it. I am still groping my way through distutils to see if there is a solution.

January 9th, 2013 @ 04:45 PM