pip wheel -r doesn't build wheels for dependencies of editable requirements

[Symmetric]

echo '-e ./module' | pip wheel -r /dev/stdin

Gives the output:

ignoring file:///home/me/module
You must give at least one requirement to wheel (see "pip help wheel")

The behaviour I would expect is for pip to create wheels for the dependencies of 'module', and skip making the wheel for 'module' itself (since it's an editable/develop module). If you don't want to install the dependencies, it seems that's what the '--no-deps' flag is for.

The use-case is an app where the components are all installed as develop/editable installs (using '-e ./module' in requirements.txt). For pip install -r requirements.txt this correctly fetches dependencies.

[qwcode]

agreed, but moreover maybe pip wheel should just build the wheel for the editable requirement as well.

[qwcode]

on 2nd thought, that will often end up with a confusing result.
working on a PR now though for the original problem.

[Symmetric]

Awesome, thanks for the speedy response!

[Symmetric]

After attempting to work around this issue, I've found a related problem with pip wheel handling of editable installs, which might factor in to your fix here.

If I have nested projects, with a dependency from the container to the contained project:

setup.py
/subproject/setup.py

requirements.txt:
  -e subproject

The wheel install fails, because it can't locate the dependency for subproject:

Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement subproject (from project==0.1)

I suppose this is to be expected, since per the above bug, the -e subproject line is being ignored. Not sure if this was on your radar already; I'm happy to provide more detail if you need it.

[Ivoz]

@Symmetric the name requirements.txt is simply a convention, not a standard; so pip / setuptools have never been designed to automatically find a project or projects using it. You can't use it for specifying dependencies like that.

it should probably work if you have in the top project a requirements.txt with

-e subsubject/
-e .

and then use pip wheel -r requirements.txt on that.

[ithinkmfallin]

I didn't get it? what is requirement.txt?
I am finding same problem on windows.