[🐛 Bug]: Instructions for setting up a local development environment for Python need updating

[cgoldberg]

What happened?

Does anyone know how to setup a local development environment for Python?

There are some outdated build instructions here:

• https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/wiki/Python-Bindings

... but they no longer work. I would like to get it working then update those instructions.

The goal:

I have the selenium repo cloned and all I want to be able to do is make some changes to the source code, then build the package so I can import it and use it. Ideally, it would be installed in editible mode, so I can work on the package without reinstalling it.

I can't use Bazel and all the selenium build machinery... I just want an isolated Python environment using standard Python tooling. I looked through the Bazel configs to see how it builds the Python bindings, but I can't figure out how to do the same outside of Bazel.

What I've tried:

After cloning the repo, I would think I could just create a virtual environment, install requirements, then install with pip in editible mode:

cd selenium/py
python3 -m venv venv
source ./venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -e .

But this fails while building the package. It fails on the running build_rust step with the error:

distutils.errors.DistutilsFileError: can't find manifest for Rust extension `selenium.webdriver.common.selenium-manager` at path `Cargo.toml`

Am I missing a step or some dependency?

Can anyone help me out?

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How can we reproduce the issue?

Try to setup a local Python development environment.

Relevant log output

N/A

Operating System

Linux (Debian)

Selenium version

Python

What are the browser(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

N/A

What are the browser driver(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

N/A

Are you using Selenium Grid?

N/A

[github-actions]

@cgoldberg, thank you for creating this issue. We will troubleshoot it as soon as we can.

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Thank you!

[Delta456]

Have you checked https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium?tab=readme-ov-file#developing? It has instructions for Python bindings, and they work. Wikia was updated in 2018, which would make it several years outdated. Probably should remove it entirely, IMO.

[cgoldberg]

Yes, I have seen that readme. That method works, but it requires you to have Bazel/Go/Java/Rust/Cargo and a lot of dependencies installed... which I was trying to avoid. It also builds a new python package (wheel/sdist), that you then need to install to use the modified code... so that's a very slow/tedious way to do development.

I finally got it all figured out, and have a development environment setup that runs directly from source using plain old Python tooling. I will write up instructions somewhere then close this issue. I will also either update or remove that wiki content.

[Delta456]

I am looking forward to your development environment setup!

I feel many people including myself didn't know there's a wiki so it never got updated with time 😅

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity since it was closed. Please open a new issue for related bugs.