Mayflower

Mayflower creates re-producable and re-locatable python builds. The builds
created with Mayflower are re-producable in the sense that all binaries for the
builds are built from source. These builds are re-locatable meaning you can
move the root directory around on the filesystem.

Building a Mayflower Build

Currently building assumes your building on x86_64

Linux Dependencies

• gcc
• make
• bison
• libtool
• patchelf

Arch linux varients also require libxcrypt-compat

This should get fixed in the future.

Building on Linux

Running python3 -m mayflower.build.linux --clean will, if successful, create a python
environment to the build/ directory. All of the dependencies needed for
Python are located in build/lib.

Mac OS Dependencies

• developer tools

Building on Mac OS

Run python3 -m mayflower.build.darwin --clean

How it Works

1. Build python from source.

2. Modify the rpath of all binaries so that shared libraries are loaded via
   relative paths.

3. Modify the shebangs of Python's scripts run Python using a relative path.

4. Install a small wrapper around Pip which makes sure the shebangs of
   installed scripst use the relative python. This wrapper will also limit the
   PYTHONPATH of scripts run to directories in our python environment.

Using The Build

After a build completes succesfully you'll have a self contained python. It
should work just like any other python installation. The difference is this
python can be moved around on the filesystem or even to other machines.

# cp -R ./build ./mycoolbuild
# mycoolbuild/bin/pip3 install mycoolpython
# tar cJf mycoolbuild.tar.xz mycoolbuild

Pre-Built Mayflower Builds

Because Mayflower's builds are re-producable, a build on OS version should end
up being exactly the same as one built on another OS or version. Therefore the
builds created by the CI/CD pipelines in this repository can be used in lue of
building yourself.