qtile: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'xcffib.ffi_build'

Maintainers update (2023-06-15)

This is now fixed on tree but not released yet.

In the meantime, you can install Qtile from source with pip install git+https://github.com/qtile/qtile@master. 😃

The issue:

Hi guys,

After trying to update qtile (from Github) in my Fedora machine I bumped with this issue:

Defaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeable
Processing /home/eddie/qtile
  Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... error
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error
  
  × Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) did not run successfully.
  │ exit code: 1
  ╰─> [44 lines of output]
      /usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/_distutils/dist.py:264: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'use_scm_version'
        warnings.warn(msg)
      Failed to find pulseaudio headers. PulseVolume widget will be unavailable
      Failed to find pywlroots. Wayland backend libinput configuration will be unavailable.
      Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py", line 351, in <module>
          main()
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py", line 333, in main
          json_out['return_val'] = hook(**hook_input['kwargs'])
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py", line 152, in prepare_metadata_for_build_wheel
          return hook(metadata_directory, config_settings)
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 377, in prepare_metadata_for_build_wheel
          self.run_setup()
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 484, in run_setup
          self).run_setup(setup_script=setup_script)
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 335, in run_setup
          exec(code, locals())
        File "<string>", line 105, in <module>
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/__init__.py", line 87, in setup
          return distutils.core.setup(**attrs)
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/_distutils/core.py", line 147, in setup
          _setup_distribution = dist = klass(attrs)
                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py", line 476, in __init__
          _Distribution.__init__(
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/_distutils/dist.py", line 282, in __init__
          self.finalize_options()
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py", line 900, in finalize_options
          ep(self)
        File "/usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py", line 920, in _finalize_setup_keywords
          ep.load()(self, ep.name, value)
        File "/home/eddie/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/cffi/setuptools_ext.py", line 219, in cffi_modules
          add_cffi_module(dist, cffi_module)
        File "/home/eddie/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/cffi/setuptools_ext.py", line 49, in add_cffi_module
          execfile(build_file_name, mod_vars)
        File "/home/eddie/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/cffi/setuptools_ext.py", line 25, in execfile
          exec(code, glob, glob)
        File "libqtile/backend/x11/xcursors_ffi_build.py", line 25, in <module>
          from xcffib.ffi_build import ffi as xcffib_ffi
      ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'xcffib.ffi_build'
      [end of output]
  
  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
error: metadata-generation-failed

× Encountered error while generating package metadata.
╰─> See above for output.

note: This is an issue with the package mentioned above, not pip.
hint: See above for details.

I also tried some of the solution here to no avail.

Thanks,

Eddie

Required:

I have searched past issues to see if this bug has already been reported.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created a year ago
Reactions: 1
Comments: 39 (23 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Sorry if I’m being rude, but this repo is about Qtile, not Arch Linux

I thought because the AUR package is maintained by @m-col , it would be good to keep the discussion related to this issue in one place. Sorry if I misjudged this. More clarity on this would be appreciated. I will add a comment to the AUR package page. (Due to some unrelated breakage in xkeyboardconfig I wasn’t able to log in there earlier)

I found out how to select a specific older revision of the git repo, so now I am using the qtile version from 3 weeks ago again.

If you want to run on Wayland, you most likely want to install Qtile with the extra-dependencies: pip install qtile[wayland]

Ah, yeah that sounds right, I just couldn’t remember the exact syntax. Thanks for reminding me. Unforunately even after installing the missing dependencies with pip by trial and error, all I got was a segfault. Seems like the same problem I had when trying to test the wlroots-0.16 branch. I tried asking there how to properly test qtile in a venv (so not using the system packages I guess?), but haven’t gotten an answer. If there is some documentation about this, I would be very grateful if you could point me to it.

Feel free to continue this discussion in https://github.com/qtile/qtile/pull/3985, seeing as it now departs more from the original issue.

bodograumann on Jun 19, 2023

@cr1ogen This is another problem, can you please open another issue?

ramnes on Jun 10, 2023

Alright then come to Discord / IRC if you want me to investigate

I was just looking at your chat with Alex on discord, but now I have to get back to work (i’m from Argentina xD). Thanks anyway

I’m Alex from discord, I’ll describe the step by step I used to install qtile.

The following steps were used on Ubuntu 23.04:

Required packages: python3-virtualenv python3-pip

mkdir ~/qtile python3 -m virtualenv ~/qtile source ~/qtile/bin/activate

pip install xcffib==1.3.0 pip install --no-cache-dir cairocffi pip install --no-use-pep517 --no-build-isolation qtile

OPTIONAL: pip install dbus-next

#Leaving the virtualenv deactivate

When installing qtile by pip, it does not create the xsessions entry and also does not create the /usr/share/doc/qtile/default_config.py file

Alternative default config file: https://github.com/qtile/qtile/blob/master/libqtile/resources/default_config.py

OPTIONAL: install package: python3-virtualenv-clone

#move virtualenv folder ‘qtile’ for /opt/qtile sudo virtualenv-clone ~/qtile /opt/qtile

#replace user sudo chown -R user:user /opt/qtile

#set qtile for enviroment mkdir ~/.local/share/bin ln -s /opt/qtile/bin/qtile ~/.local/share/bin/qtile

#add PATH ~/.local/share/bin on .bashrc or .zshrc export PATH=“$HOME/.local/share/bin:$PATH”

#creating an entry in xsessions | /usr/share/xsessions/qtile.desktop [Desktop Entry] Name=Qtile Comment=Qtile Session Exec=/opt/qtile/bin/qtile start Type=Application X-GDM-SessionRegisters=true Keywords=wm;tiling

amonetlol on Jun 8, 2023

Alright then come to Discord / IRC if you want me to investigate

ramnes on Jun 7, 2023

Your Qtile still talks with 1.4.0 somehow. There really should be no other reason for that error to happen.

ramnes on Jun 6, 2023

I just added a note on the OP and pinned the issue until we finish this “migration” since I guess most newcomers will hit this.

ramnes on Jun 5, 2023

Well I don’t know what I was doing wrong because I was using this sequence:

pip install --no-cache xcffib==1.3.0
pip install --no-build-isolation --no-cache --upgrade --ignore-installed "cairocffi[xcb]"
python -m pip install  --no-build-isolation --no-cache --upgrade .

And that was leading to the errors above. Note that I also tried pip install --no-build-isolation --no-cache --upgrade --ignore-installed "cairocffi[xcb]==1.3.0" with no success.

My solution was:

pip install -I --force-reinstall --no-cache xcffib==1.3.0

and then install qtile.

Also is worth to note that after installing cairocffi[xcb] a folder of xcffib 1.4 version was created. It may be related with @tych0 issue

Thanks anyway guys.

ebiscaia on Jun 5, 2023