Advanced Usage

Automatic Testing

Use Tox as the runner

Tox is a great tool for testing against multiple Python versions or dependency sets. You can configure a tox.ini like the following to integrate your testing with PDM:

[tox]
env_list = py{36,37,38},lint

[testenv]
setenv =
    PDM_IGNORE_SAVED_PYTHON="1"
deps = pdm
commands =
    pdm install --dev
    pytest tests

[testenv:lint]
deps = pdm
commands =
    pdm install -G lint
    flake8 src/

To use the virtualenv created by Tox, you should make sure you have set pdm config python.use_venv true. PDM then will install dependencies from pdm lock into the virtualenv. In the dedicated venv you can directly run tools by pytest tests/ instead of pdm run pytest tests/.

You should also make sure you don't run pdm add/pdm remove/pdm update/pdm lock in the test commands, otherwise the pdm lock file will be modified unexpectedly. Additional dependencies can be supplied with the deps config. Besides, isolated_build and passenv config should be set as the above example to make PDM work properly.

To get rid of these constraints, there is a Tox plugin tox-pdm which can ease the usage. You can install it by

pip install tox-pdm

Or,

pdm add --dev tox-pdm

And you can make the tox.ini much tidier as following, :

[tox]
env_list = py{36,37,38},lint

[testenv]
groups = dev
commands =
    pytest tests

[testenv:lint]
groups = lint
commands =
    flake8 src/

See the project's README for a detailed guidance.

Use Nox as the runner

Nox is another great tool for automated testing. Unlike tox, Nox uses a standard Python file for configuration.

It is much easier to use PDM in Nox, here is an example of noxfile.py:

import os
import nox

os.environ.update({"PDM_IGNORE_SAVED_PYTHON": "1"})

@nox.session
def tests(session):
    session.run_always('pdm', 'install', '-G', 'test', external=True)
    session.run('pytest')

@nox.session
def lint(session):
    session.run_always('pdm', 'install', '-G', 'lint', external=True)
    session.run('flake8', '--import-order-style', 'google')

Note that PDM_IGNORE_SAVED_PYTHON should be set so that PDM can pick up the Python in the virtualenv correctly. Also make sure pdm is available in the PATH. Before running nox, you should also ensure configuration item python.use_venv is true to enable venv reusing.

About PEP 582 __pypackages__ directory

By default, if you run tools by pdm run, __pypackages__ will be seen by the program and all subprocesses created by it. This means virtual environments created by those tools are also aware of the packages inside __pypackages__, which result in unexpected behavior in some cases. For nox, you can avoid this by adding a line in noxfile.py:

os.environ.pop("PYTHONPATH", None)

For tox, PYTHONPATH will not be passed to the test sessions so this isn't going to be a problem. Moreover, it is recommended to make nox and tox live in their own pipx environments so you don't need to install for every project. In this case, PEP 582 packages will not be a problem either.

Use PDM in Continuous Integration

Only one thing to keep in mind -- PDM can't be installed on Python < 3.7, so if your project is to be tested on those Python versions, you have to make sure PDM is installed on the correct Python version, which can be different from the target Python version the particular job/task is run on.

Fortunately, if you are using GitHub Action, there is pdm-project/setup-pdm to make this process easier. Here is an example workflow of GitHub Actions, while you can adapt it for other CI platforms.

Testing:
  runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
  strategy:
    matrix:
      python-version: [3.7, 3.8, 3.9, '3.10']
      os: [ubuntu-latest, macOS-latest, windows-latest]

  steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: Set up PDM
      uses: pdm-project/setup-pdm@v2
      with:
        python-version: ${{ matrix.python-version }}

    - name: Install dependencies
      run: |
        pdm sync -d -G testing
    - name: Run Tests
      run: |
        pdm run -v pytest tests

TIPS

For GitHub Action users, there is a known compatibility issue on Ubuntu virtual environment. If PDM parallel install is failed on that machine you should either set parallel_install to false or set env LD_PRELOAD=/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1. It is already handled by the pdm-project/setup-pdm action.

Note

If your CI scripts run without a proper user set, you might get permission errors when PDM tries to create its cache directory. To work around this, you can set the HOME environment variable yourself, to a writable directory, for example:

export HOME=/tmp/home

Use PDM in a multi-stage Dockerfile

It is possible to use PDM in a multi-stage Dockerfile to first install the project and dependencies into __pypackages__ and then copy this folder into the final stage, adding it to PYTHONPATH.

# build stage
FROM python:3.8 AS builder

# install PDM
RUN pip install -U pip setuptools wheel
RUN pip install pdm

# copy files
COPY pyproject.toml pdm.lock README.md /project/
COPY src/ /project/src

# install dependencies and project into the local packages directory
WORKDIR /project
RUN mkdir __pypackages__ && pdm sync --prod --no-editable


# run stage
FROM python:3.8

# retrieve packages from build stage
ENV PYTHONPATH=/project/pkgs
COPY --from=builder /project/__pypackages__/3.8/lib /project/pkgs

# retrieve executables
COPY --from=builder /project/__pypackages__/3.8/bin/* /bin/

# set command/entrypoint, adapt to fit your needs
CMD ["python", "-m", "project"]

Use PDM to manage a monorepo

With PDM, you can have multiple sub-packages within a single project, each with its own pyproject.toml file. And you can create only one pdm.lock file to lock all dependencies. The sub-packages can have each other as their dependencies. To achieve this, follow these steps:

project/pyproject.toml:

[tool.pdm.dev-dependencies]
dev = [
    "-e file:///${PROJECT_ROOT}/packages/foo-core",
    "-e file:///${PROJECT_ROOT}/packages/foo-cli",
    "-e file:///${PROJECT_ROOT}/packages/foo-app",
]

packages/foo-cli/pyproject.toml:

[projects]
dependencies = ["foo-core"]

packages/foo-app/pyproject.toml:

[projects]
dependencies = ["foo-core"]

Now, run pdm install in the project root, and you will get a pdm.lock with all dependencies locked. All sub-packages will be installed in editable mode.

Look at the 🚀 Example repository for more details.

Hooks for pre-commit

pre-commit is a powerful framework for managing git hooks in a centralized fashion. PDM already uses pre-commit hooks for its internal QA checks. PDM exposes also several hooks that can be run locally or in CI pipelines.

Export requirements.txt or setup.py

This hook wraps the command pdm export along with any valid argument. It can be used as a hook (e.g., for CI) to ensure that you are going to check in the codebase a requirements.txt or a setup.py file, which reflects the actual content of pdm lock.

# export python requirements
- repo: https://github.com/pdm-project/pdm
  rev: 2.x.y # a PDM release exposing the hook
  hooks:
    - id: pdm-export
      # command arguments, e.g.:
      args: ['-o', 'requirements.txt', '--without-hashes']
      files: ^pdm.lock$

Check pdm.lock is up to date with pyproject.toml

This hook wraps the command pdm lock --check along with any valid argument. It can be used as a hook (e.g., for CI) to ensure that whenever pyproject.toml has a dependency added/changed/removed, that pdm.lock is also up to date.

- repo: https://github.com/pdm-project/pdm
  rev: 2.x.y # a PDM release exposing the hook
  hooks:
    - id: pdm-lock-check