npm-related build issue

Description

I’m encountering issues when building jupyterlab-widgets from source. I’m not sure if this is the right repo to report this to, but https://pypi.org/project/jupyterlab-widgets/ lists this as the homepage.

Reproduce

1. Install all dependencies
2. Download https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/27/f1/0d3a09c0069467ed9636faf3a9b5b758378216bb891066a0bc24799681e3/jupyterlab_widgets-1.0.2.tar.gz
3. Extract the tarball and enter the directory
4. Run pip install .

It may also be possible to reproduce using pip install --no-binary jupyterlab-widgets but I haven’t tried this yet.

During installation, jupyter-packaging seems to be using npm to download random dependencies from the internet (hopefully verifying those checksums) and fails to install one of them:

  running bdist_wheel
  running jsdeps
  Installing build dependencies with npm.  This may take a while...
  > jlpm install
  yarn install v1.21.1
  info No lockfile found.
  [1/4] Resolving packages...
...
  $ jlpm run clean && jlpm run build:prod
  yarn run v1.21.1
  $ jlpm run clean:lib
  $ rimraf lib tsconfig.tsbuildinfo
  Done in 1.34s.
  yarn run v1.21.1
  $ jlpm run build:lib && jlpm run build:labextension
  $ tsc
  tsconfig.json(2,14): error TS6053: File '../tsconfigbase' not found.
  tsconfig.json(10,5): error TS6053: File '/tmp/adam/spack-stage/spack-stage-py-jupyterlab-widgets-1.0.2-lxlhfv4qa2lkn4sn6sn2odsqgarlp5gd/packages/base' not found.
  tsconfig.json(13,5): error TS6053: File '/tmp/adam/spack-stage/spack-stage-py-jupyterlab-widgets-1.0.2-lxlhfv4qa2lkn4sn6sn2odsqgarlp5gd/packages/controls' not found.
  tsconfig.json(16,5): error TS6053: File '/tmp/adam/spack-stage/spack-stage-py-jupyterlab-widgets-1.0.2-lxlhfv4qa2lkn4sn6sn2odsqgarlp5gd/packages/output' not found.
  error Command failed with exit code 2.
  info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.
  error Command failed with exit code 2.
  info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.
  error Command failed with exit code 2.
  info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/install for documentation about this command.

Expected behavior

I would expect to be able to build jupyterlab-widgets without having to install npm, without npm downloading random dependencies from the internet, and without those npm installations failing.

Context

• ipywidgets version: jupyterlab-widgets 1.0.2
• Operating System and version: Ubuntu 18.04
• Browser and version: N/A

[jasongrout]

It looks like our autodetection of whether the build should happen or not is missing now on master, so it will always try to rebuild the javascript. You see remnants of our crude check here, for example: https://github.com/jupyter-widgets/ipywidgets/blob/045cb0eeb21643373ddbd49a2a12acaad8cbb900/python/jupyterlab_widgets/setup.py#L16 (the build is only supposed to happen if we are in the git repo and we don’t have the necessary source files).

[vidartf]

@adamjstewart Thanks for clarifying. I’ll try to bring it up during the discussions for the next release, and see what the mood is for/against. That said, we cannot go back and patch this into previous releases.