Michael A. Smith created AVRO-2635:
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Summary: Guidance on how to properly invoke tools.py
Key: AVRO-2635
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-2635
Project: Apache Avro
Issue Type: Task
Components: python
Reporter: Michael A. Smith
We need to move the deprecated {{StringIO.StringIO}} and {{cStringIO.StringIO}}
usages in the Python codebase to modern {{io.BytesIO}}. Weirdly, if we do that,
the interop tests will fail, because we shadow Python's builtin {{io}} module
with {{avro.io}} by invoking tool.py directly from [within the python
package|https://github.com/apache/avro/blob/fd80ae5939270a4af993465ca625f50f46a791b6/share/test/interop/bin/test_rpc_interop.sh#L27]
with e.g. {{python lang/py/build/src/avro/tool.py rpcsend}}.
When you invoke a python script directly, Python prepends the script's path to
the {{sys.path}}. Since avro's {{io.py}} is in the same path as {{tool.py}},
the standard library's {{io}} module becomes inaccessible.
There are a couple of ways we can resolve this, but none are entirely
transparent to end users:
# Move tool.py into a subdirectory so it isn't in the same path as io.py}}.
# Guide users not to invoke tool.py directly, but instead to call {{python -m
avro.tool}}.
# Install tool.py into the PATH via setuptools' {{console_scripts}} entrypoint.
Option #1 would require a significant code change and still require updating
documentation and unconfusing users.
Option #3 would be tricky to implement given how our current codebase expects
to install with both and _and_ setuptools.
So my suggestion is that we go with Option #2, and introduce a warning into
tool.py so that folks get a helpful message right before the crash.
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