Pants on Fedora Silverblue

[jgarte]

Hi,

This is an open question for anyone who might know that answer on it and would like to share knowledge on it.

What would be required to run pants on Fedora Silverblue?

https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/

[tymonx]

I cannot run pants on Fedora Kinoite 41. Always during pants initialization I got:

Bootstrapping Pants 2.23.1
Installing pantsbuild.pants==2.23.1 into a virtual environment at ~/.cache/nce/830340ce637c599fc91aa9134dedaf6fcc4aa28cff14aaee2d17a9fb389f3788/bindings/venvs/2.23.1
Failed to create Pants virtual environment.
Error: Command '['~/.cache/nce/830340ce637c599fc91aa9134dedaf6fcc4aa28cff14aaee2d17a9fb389f3788/bindings/pex_root/venvs/e9325278eb97b235cc28d540e6599e7f5e69fa25/26370fab5363b5853491d34b76f797698ceb0767/bin/python', '/tmp/tmpkopo2xsh.pex', 'venv', '--prompt', 'Pants 2.23.1', '--compile', '--pip', '--collisions-ok', '--no-emit-warnings', '--disable-cache', '~/.cache/nce/830340ce637c599fc91aa9134dedaf6fcc4aa28cff14aaee2d17a9fb389f3788/bindings/venvs/2.23.1']' returned non-zero exit status 1., output:
-----
b'Traceback (most recent call last):\n  File "~/.cache/nce/67912efc04f9156d8f5b48a0348983defb964de043b8c13ddc6cc8a002f8e691/cpython-3.9.18+20240107-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-install_only.tar.gz/python/lib/python3.9/runpy.py", line 197, in _run_module_as_main\n    return _run_code(code, main_globals, None,\n  File "~/.cache/nce/67912efc04f9156d8f5b48a0348983defb964de043b8c13ddc6cc8a002f8e691/cpython-3.9.18+20240107-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-install_only.tar.gz/python/lib/python3.9/runpy.py", line 87, in _run_code\n    exec(code, run_globals)\n  File "~/.cache/pex/unzipped_pexes/184d8f123e01bce47c107d40e58a3212c8ef50ce/__main__.py", line 227, in <module>\n    result, should_exit, is_globals = boot(\n  File "~/.cache/pex/unzipped_pexes/184d8f123e01bce47c107d40e58a3212c8ef50ce/__main__.py", line 216, in boot\n    from pex.globals import Globals\nModuleNotFoundError: No module named \'pex\'\n'
-----

Error: Failed to establish atomic directory ~/.cache/nce/830340ce637c599fc91aa9134dedaf6fcc4aa28cff14aaee2d17a9fb389f3788/locks/install-fca0ceb9acf25d23ab8b8e9bc412050c77ce104d267a0f5b464bc31a13da0ce6. Population of work directory failed: Boot binding command failed: exit status: 1

The only workaround is to run pants using Python container image. For example:

podman run -it --rm --userns keep-id --workdir "$(pwd)" --volume "$(pwd):$(pwd):rw,z" python:3.13.1 bash

[tymonx]

I have raised an issue: #21799

[tymonx]

Issue was solved for Pants 2.25.0.dev3 that is using Pex 2.27.1 containing necessary fixes (pex-tool/pex#2626) required by Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite (Atomic OS, immutable). Just create pants.toml file with at least:

[GLOBAL]
pants_version = "2.25.0.dev3"

And run the pants command.

[jsirois]

@jgarte if @tymonx's issues are any indication, the answer is to use very, very new Pants - 2.25.0.dev3 or newer. The underlying issues in Pex dealing with symlinked home dirs were not fully solved until the Pex 2.27.1 release, which is only picked up by Pants in Pants 2.25.0.dev3.