Python package development¶

Python package development happens when you work on a single Python package (e.g. invenio-communities). Either you are building a completely new package or you are adding/modifying an existing package.

Prerequisites¶

Make sure you have already checked out the source code of the module(s) you want to work on.

Install¶

Once you got the source code, create a Python virtual environment and make an editable install of the Python package. We recommend using uv, but you can also use pip:

To install optional dependency sets, add each extra declared by the package separately. For example:

cd ~/src/invenio-app-rdm
# opensearch2 only needed for certain modules
uv sync --extra tests --extra opensearch2
# or, if you are used to the pip way:
uv pip install -e ".[tests,opensearch2]"

cd ~/src/invenio-app-rdm
mkvirtualenv app-rdm
# opensearch2 only needed for certain modules
pip install -e ".[tests,opensearch2]"

For each package, check which extras it declares and install only those you need. For example, tests is commonly needed for testing, while opensearch2 is needed only by packages that support OpenSearch 2. An extra that is not declared by a package cannot be passed to uv sync.

Run tests¶

Running the test is normally as simple as:

./run-tests.sh

The run-tests.sh under the hood uses pytest to run the tests. If the module needs services such as a database, cache or search index, the script usually uses docker-services-cli to automatically boot up the required services

Multiple packages¶

If you need to work on multiple packages at the same time - for instance you could be adding a cross-cutting feature to invenio-communities and invenio-requests at the same time, the installation is almost identical to a single module:

First make sure you have the source code of both modules. Next, create one virtual environment and install both packages in editable mode:

For independent packages, use uv pip to install them into one environment. uv sync is scoped to its current project (or a configured uv workspace).

uv pip install -e "~/src/invenio-communities[tests,opensearch2]" \
    -e "~/src/invenio-requests[tests,elasticsearch7]"

mkvirtualenv communities
pip install -e "~/src/invenio-communities[tests,opensearch2]" \
    -e "~/src/invenio-requests[tests,elasticsearch7]"

Application integration¶

See the section on pre-release instance development for how to integrate your development version(s) in a development InvenioRDM application for integration testing.