Smooth IDE support for python_rules

[RmStorm]

🚀 feature request

Description

I would like smooth editor support of the python_rules. Now when I open an editor (tried helix and vscode) neither recognizes any of the third party imports properly breaking autocomplete and type checking.

Describe the solution you'd like

Something like what the rules_go people have done but I imagine that pyright (the most commonly used python language server) does not have support for something similar to the gopackagedriver.. So I was thinking more along the lines of a shell script that manipulates PATH and PYTHONPATH to achieve something similar. still hacky but better than what I have now. It's also something that would work for other python language server's such as ruff-lsp.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Manually make a venv with the same dependencies and activate that before starting my editor. Works fine but it's hackish and it won't work for generated code. For example python files generated from protobuf by Bazel..

[aignas]

Note, that pyright is a static type checker https://github.com/microsoft/pyright. Pylense is a closed-source LSP that is only available within VSCode.

For now you could use https://github.com/cedarai/rules_pyvenv to create a virtual environment for a target, that provides good editor integration. That may work with generated code.

[alexeagle]

https://github.com/aspect-build/rules_py has the explicit goal of providing excellent Python IDE support for py_* rules.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity for 180 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs in 30 days.
Collaborators can add an assignee to keep this open indefinitely. Thanks for your contributions to rules_python!

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity for 180 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs in 30 days.
Collaborators can add an assignee to keep this open indefinitely. Thanks for your contributions to rules_python!

[tpasternak]

Recently, the IntelliJ/PyCharm plugin has received a lot of great patches, I think your could try it

[antspy]

https://github.com/aspect-build/rules_py has the explicit goal of providing excellent Python IDE support for py_* rules.

Hi,

Would it be possible to provide an example on how to enable the IDE support? I can't seem to find any specific explanation of how to integrate these rules with any IDE (e.g. vscode).

Thanks!

[alexeagle]

@antspy
bazel run //my_target.venv puts the virtualenv folder in your source tree, then you point your editor at it, for example https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/environments#_select-and-activate-an-environment

In my testing, it was a lot easier to get this to work when the virtualenv is in the repo root, for some reason it was hard to get VSCode to discover one that's in a subfolder - but according to the docs it should work. LMK what you find.

[antspy]

@alexeagle
Thank a lot for your answer - this worked!

For posterity:
I have created a py_binary in the root BUILD.bazel file, which contains all third-party dependencies. Then I run bazel run mybinary.venv, which creates a .venv folder in the root directory.

I point VSCode to this environment (it should recognize it automatically) and things seem to be working! :)

For the future:

1. Make the fake binary depend on the requirements automatically, so I don't have to specify external dependencies twice. I am sure they can be extracted somehow from the pip_compile rule, but I have not investigated this.
2. Make the process less manual (e.g. having the bazel vscode extension automatically build these things)

Anyway, thank you for the help! :)