Support HTTP requests using system CA bundle

[kvedurmu]

This issue was initially reported in the Cloud Foundry Python Buildpack, but it probably makes sense to consider it in the Paketo Buildpack as well.

The request here would be for the buildpack to automatically set export REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt (perhaps only when the app uses the requests package?). This would allow Python apps to make HTTP requests using the system/operator defined CA certificate

[arjun024]

@kvedurmu Looks like requests is not part of the Python Standard Library, and is a popular external library. Given this, should we instead just advice users to set their env vars in <appdir>/.profile?

[kvedurmu]

Yeah, the idea would be the env var is only set when the requests package is in the requirements.txt file. That said, I don't have any strong opinions here.

[fg-j]

It's been a little while since the last activity on this issue. @paketo-buildpacks/python-maintainers, is this still a relevant feature?

[robdimsdale]

I haven't heard any recent feedback indicating this is something we should solve, so I'm going to close this issue. We can re-open if/when we get more evidence that this feature would be valuable.

[benjie91]

I was using Procfile to specify the startup command and I realised that setting BPE_DEFAULT_REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE does not set the environment variable and thus my requests to external URL fails. Any documentation on how this should be done?

The only workaround that I think might work but I have not tested yet is to use launcher command instead of the Procfile method.