The rpds-py issue

[cxzhong]

We need to update the juypter to the newest version for python 3.14. But for jsonschema it needs rpds-py which needs maturin then rust toolchains. So it can not compile from source.

How to solve it now? Relate to #38219 We can check whether the user has a rustc in the system?
In Ubuntu, It just use sudo apt install rustc cargo it is not hard.
And maybe after that, we can accept rust codes and rust python package.
@dimpase

[dimpase]

I don't think it's realistic to demand a rust toolchain for a default way to install Sage.

We need to reconsider a proposal I made some time ago to allow standard packages to be pip-installable (as binary wheels).
@orlitzky - I recall you mentioned the issue of rust dependencies in discussions then, it seems that the substance has finally started to hit the fan here.

[cxzhong]

#41114
You can see this. We finally have to consider this problem.
In python3.15, the version of juypter may be not useable.

[orlitzky]

Binary wheels is the least bad option. I don't think anyone will even attempt to maintain a rust toolchain (which needs binary blobs anyway) for the sage distro.

On platforms where rust is unusable or where the users object to installing "free software" as if it were Windows XP shareware, those packages will effectively cease to exist, but what can you do?

[cxzhong]

Maybe we need to download all platforms wheels from python3.12 to python3.14 then publish. Do we have some simple methods?

[dimpase]

most of Sage Python packages can be just binary wheels. @orlitzky, me, and not only, have been saying this for years that vendoring them as we do is a lot of work for very little gain.

[tobiasdiez]

My suggestion would be to remove all python stuff from sage-the-distro, and instead just call uv sync to create the venv and install all needed python packages.

[cxzhong]

But some researchers use sagemath offline.

[dimpase]

they need to get on the internet to get the installation anyway, so that's a bit moot.

It's also possible to request all the packages to be built from source (in this case the need for rust toolchain is not our headache).

One can create a tarball having all these needed packages in source form more or less automatically too

Besides, researchers who must use sagemath offline have deep pockets, so if there is a need, they should pay... ;-) I gather they might have access to a private PyPI repo with pre-vetted packages, etc etc ...

[cxzhong]

they need to get on the internet to get the installation anyway, so that's a bit moot.

It's also possible to request all the packages to be built from source (in this case the need for rust toolchain is not our headache).

One can create a tarball having all these needed packages in source form more or less automatically too

It needs to make rustc and cargo as a system requirement. And we need to check this in ./configure
In fact, many python toolchains transfer to rust based these years

[tobiasdiez]

But some researchers use sagemath offline.

These researchers can put all the tarballs / wheels in some folder and point UV_CACHE_DIR to it (and you can automatically create the cache folder using something like uv sync --no-project which downloads all dependencies but doesn't build sagemath).

[dimpase]

sure we can check for the presence of a toolchain

[cxzhong]

But seems you use cargo build it seems we need to downloads a lot things. I do not think it is a good solution. I think it is better that we need to have all wheels of rpds-py in a Sage distribution, then let pip to choose which is suitable.

[cxzhong]

But some researchers use sagemath offline.

These researchers can put all the tarballs / wheels in some folder and point UV_CACHE_DIR to it (and you can automatically create the cache folder using something like uv sync --no-project which downloads all dependencies but doesn't build sagemath).

Another issue is that how do we get uv? from wheels or from source? uv is also based on rust toolchains. I am sorry for that but I have to point out this.

[cxzhong]

rust compile process can not in an offline enviorment. finally I found that. So we can not use the way.

[orlitzky]

rust compile process can not in an offline enviorment. finally I found that. So we can not use the way.

In theory it can work offline, but in practice it won't. The rust toolchain heavily encourages bundling and static linking, and as a result, there's no ABI/API stability. Two packages A and B that depend on C are very likely to need incompatible versions of C that cannot be installed at the same time. This precludes using the current sage-distro build process, and the only "easy" fix is to let cargo build things for you... but it's going to want to download deps from all over the internet.