Is it possible to ignore CSS or JS from venv when building a pex file using django?

[baseplate-admin]

Hi guys,

I have a project that is built using django. So normally when i try to run this project.

I would simply run :

python ./manage.py collectstatic

Which will copy my staticfiles ( eg : css, js ) into a separate directory named staticfiles. This will leave my old staticfiles inside venv and my static folder. Which essentially means that i will have 2 copies of the same staticfiles.

I can syslink the files using

python .\manage.py collectstatic --clear --link

which helps with the double copy problem but it doesn't fix it fully. ( by fully fixing i mean, the collectstatic command should copy all files and then remove all other references of the files )

Now when using pantsbuild, is it possible to remove the staticfiles from venv during build process? I haven't fully checked pants yet ( planning to do after exam )

Any help will be appreciated.( i am just trying to understand if this is in the scope of pants).

Thanks for reading this. I wish you guys a good day :D and thanks for creating an awesome software like this.

[benjyw]

Sorry this didn't get answered! We weren't using GitHub Discussions at the time. But we are now!

[benjyw]

The copying you're referring to is the normal behavior of Django, yes? collectstatic copies/links the assets from their source location in each app your settings.py lists into a single merged directory that you can then deploy to a server.

In normal use, deleting the originals would be deleting your source files (not to mention, messing up the venv for any 3rdparty apps installed from wheels, such as the standard apps, like admin, that ship with Django). So that would definitely not be advised. Pants has no particular support for doing this, and it would be dangerous, because the venvs Pants uses are cached.

So my question is: what would be the reason to do this?

[baseplate-admin]

Thanks for detailed answer..

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The copying you're referring to is the normal behavior of Django, yes? collectstatic copies/links the assets from their source location in each app your settings.py lists into a single merged directory that you can then deploy to a server.

Yep. You are right :)

In normal use, deleting the originals would be deleting your source files

Not quite. If i just use collectstatic. It copies the file into a single directory. So even if i delete files in venv it wont delete my collected files. Then i can deploy the collected files to CDN. But minus point is i have to delete the files every time i reinstall/update django and then collectstatic it.

not to mention, messing up the venv for any 3rdparty apps installed from wheels, such as the standard apps, like admin, that ship with Django

I can point the STATIC_URL to the url of a CDN. https://127.0.0.1:8000/static/admin.js → https://django-test.example.com/static/admin.js
So everything will work even if i remove the files from venv.

what would be the reason to do this?

• I am deploying to aws lambda
  → AWS lambda has a strict size limit of 50MB and my Venv size with Django is 87MB-ish
  ( though i can use S3 bucket here to fix this issue. It would make my life easier if there was a easier way to achieve this)

• I am using a 3rd party admin panel package.
  → If i were to customize the admin with something like django-jet-admin i will have the django-jet-admin asset + django asset. I was thinking of reducing my venv size.. The most logical solution for me was to remove the django's assets.
  ( maybe the ideal solution here for pants is to ignore js/css for specific pip package? )

• I am deploying the Assets to CDN
  → If i were to use collectstatic and deploy said files to a cdn like cloudinary. I still have all those assets in my venv. In an ideal world ( referring to nest.js ) the tool chain will remove the assets from venv before packing ( building ) it.

( scenario no 2 is out of scope for pants, maybe? )
I am running into scenario 3

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So my question here is an edge case. But i think python ecosystem lacks an bundler ( like webpack that removes dead/unused codes ) which i thought what pants is ( should be able to do ).

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Thanks for reading

[benjyw]

Gotcha, so I think deleting from the source venv is still not a good idea, for various reasons. But stripping from the .zip might be. I think that would require a plugin. I've been thinking about writing a django plugin for some time, this could be one of its features.

[baseplate-admin]

Thank you again..

May i bother you Again by asking if there's an ETA/can i contribute Somehow to this plugin?

[benjyw]

No ETA right now, and it would require a bit of design work. But you can start by playing around with writing your own plugin that does this stripping, perhaps.