[CI/Build] migrate static project metadata from setup.py to pyproject.toml

[dtrifiro]

Static metadata can be moved to pyproject.toml and removed from setup.py

[github-actions]

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[youkaichao]

how does this affect the build process of ci, which uses python setup.py ?

[dtrifiro]

@youkaichao It should not. This is just moving static metadata from setup.py to pyproject.toml

Building wheels from this branch and main and looking at metadata doesn't show any difference:

gh pr checkout 8772
VLLM_TARGET_DEVICE=empty python setup.py bdist_wheel
# ^ creates `vllm-0.6.3.dev157+ge3bef869f.empty-py3-none-any.whl`
git checkout main
VLLM_TARGET_DEVICE=empty python setup.py bdist_wheel
# ^ creates `vllm-0.6.3.dev156+g07c11cf4d.empty-py3-none-any.whl`

# you can verify the wheel's generated metadata files:
ls **/*dist-info

Outputs:

vllm-0.6.3.dev156+g07c11cf4d.empty-py3-none-any/vllm-0.6.3.dev156+g07c11cf4d.empty.dist-info:
entry_points.txt
LICENSE
METADATA
RECORD
top_level.txt
WHEEL

vllm-0.6.3.dev157+ge3bef869f.empty-py3-none-any/vllm-0.6.3.dev157+ge3bef869f.empty.dist-info:
entry_points.txt
LICENSE
METADATA
RECORD
top_level.txt
WHEEL

You can compare files, and they're identical (except for the extra embedded license in METADATA in the dev157 build, which is this one)

[hmellor]

@dtrifiro do you plan to update this PR? It seems like a nice step towards removing setup.py

[dtrifiro]

@hmellor we will not be able to remove setup.py as we heavily rely on a custom build process. This PR aimed to move static metadata to pyproject.toml rather then remove setup.py entirely

[dtrifiro]

Removing find_packages() from setup.py and relying on autodiscovery results in a minor change in the final wheel:

A few extra files are included as part of the build:

--- layout_old.txt      2025-01-31 13:23:54.772311579 +0100
+++ layout_new.txt      2025-01-31 13:23:59.458978135 +0100
@@ -117,9 +117,7 @@
 vllm/distributed/device_communicators/tpu_communicator.py
 vllm/distributed/device_communicators/xpu_communicator.py
 vllm/distributed/kv_transfer
-vllm/distributed/kv_transfer/README.md
 vllm/distributed/kv_transfer/__init__.py
-vllm/distributed/kv_transfer/disagg_prefill_workflow.jpg
 vllm/distributed/kv_transfer/kv_transfer_agent.py
 vllm/distributed/kv_transfer/kv_connector
 vllm/distributed/kv_transfer/kv_connector/__init__.py
@@ -334,7 +332,6 @@
 vllm/model_executor/layers/fused_moe/configs/E=8,N=3584,device_name=NVIDIA_H100_80GB_HBM3,dtype=fp8_w8a8.json
 vllm/model_executor/layers/fused_moe/configs/E=8,N=3584,device_name=NVIDIA_H100_80GB_HBM3.json
 vllm/model_executor/layers/fused_moe/configs/E=8,N=3584,device_name=NVIDIA_L40S.json
-vllm/model_executor/layers/fused_moe/configs/README
 vllm/model_executor/layers/fused_moe/configs/E=8,N=4096,device_name=AMD_Instinct_MI300X,dtype=fp8_w8a8.json
 vllm/model_executor/layers/fused_moe/configs/E=8,N=4096,device_name=AMD_Instinct_MI300X.json
 vllm/model_executor/layers/fused_moe/configs/E=8,N=4096,device_name=NVIDIA_A100-SXM4-80GB.json
@@ -696,7 +693,6 @@
 vllm/v1/worker/gpu_model_runner.py
 vllm/v1/worker/gpu_worker.py
 vllm/vllm_flash_attn
-vllm/vllm_flash_attn/.gitkeep
 vllm/vllm_flash_attn/__init__.py
 vllm/vllm_flash_attn/flash_attn_interface.py
 vllm/worker

To check what is included in each wheel (using the CPU build to speed up the process):

export VLLM_TARGET_DEVICE=cpu UV_EXTRA_INDEX_URL=https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu UV_INDEX_STRATEGY="unsafe-best-match" VLLM_CPU_DISABLE_AVX512=true

python -m build --wheel --installer=uv
cd dist
unzip -l vllm*whl

[simon-mo]

Please leave a note in the setup.py's setup function invocation telling developers to add things to pyproject.toml if it is static.

[dtrifiro]

@simon-mo done.

Some requirements (optional requirements groups) are currently static but I left them in pyproject.yoml regardless for consistency, maybe this could be worth revisiting after #7525 is merged

[dtrifiro]

Build failures look unrelated

[dtrifiro]

@simon-mo can we merge this?