# Scikit-build Community Meeting #3: 2023-01-20

###### tags: scikit-build

## Attending

- Matt McCormick
- Ralf Gommers
- Henry Schreiner
- Jean-Christophe Fillion-Robin

## Discussion

### New version of build, packaging bootstrapping discussion

- [flit](https://github.com/pypa/flit) as a background
- `flit-core` -> `flit` -> `installer`
- remove `setuptools` circular dependency
- Self-contained (only dependency is `toml`, which is available in newer CPython)
- `wheel` over to flit core?
- `packaging` library should be in Python
- `meson-python` dependencies
- `meson` (no dependencies)
- .pyz file
- see https://docs.python.org/3/library/zipapp.html
- zip files containing Python code, which can be executed directly by the Python interpreter
- Linux distributions want to build from "original" sources
- `installer` helps the story to build wheels from source
- `scikit-build-core` deps
- See https://github.com/scikit-build/scikit-build-core/blob/main/pyproject.toml
- `hatchling` -- could be swapped out if needed at some time in the future
- `vcs-versioning` -- torn about keeping
- `importlib-resources` older versions
- other basic backport packages for older versions of Python
- PEP 517 support: `pyproject-metadata`, `distlib` (wheel support), `pythonspec`

### Henry updates

#### [**Presentation**](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vT31cR61fb9wFbGLmzkGpngcdFesvtZQI_F8d8BuZVPEF8K8Emh-OJ8cPBoHY30csMqglVtIUmrjUPe/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000)
- Awkward Array - use `pyodide build`?
- https://awkward-array.org/doc/main/getting-started/try-awkward-array.html
- https://pyodide.org/en/stable/index.html
- https://pyodide.org/en/stable/usage/wasm-constraints.html
- Primary need for putting Windows / ARM on the map: ninja binaries
- Stable ABI
- Python 3.11 for buffer interface
- Pybind11 3.12 due to metaclass support
- NumPy, SciPy etc. difficult due to limited Cython support
- HPy may be a good practical path. See https://hpyproject.org/

- What would improve Python development overall: automated virtual enviroment generation when needed

### Distributing shared libraries

- About shipping non-Python shared libraries and linking against them: https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson-python/issues/265. Could probably use a shared approach between scikit-build and meson-python

### Discussion for next time

*Packaging-native* documentation
- E.g. dealing with shared libraries
- cross-compilation