Haystack Transitive Dependencies

[eli64s]

Context

Hello Poetry Team,

I'm part of an AI team within an enterprise setting, developing a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) service using haystack-ai. We're troubleshooting an issue with our Docker build specifically related to dependency management using Poetry and pyproject.toml. In our Dockerfile, we utilize the following command to handle the installation of dependencies:

RUN poetry install --no-root

After the Docker image is built and the service is operational, we've noticed that some transitive dependencies of haystack-ai, like networkx, are not being installed. This leads to a runtime error:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'networkx'

To mitigate this, I adjusted the Dockerfile to include a lock step before installation:

RUN poetry lock --no-update && poetry install --no-root

This change successfully resolves the dependency issue but adds approximately 400 seconds to our build time.

Questions

1. Performance Concerns: The added poetry lock --no-update command significantly increases our build time. Is this indicative of a misconfiguration in our Docker setup, or is it considered a best practice under these circumstances?

2. Dependency Resolution: Could you clarify why the poetry lock --no-update command is necessary when the lock file should already detail all required dependencies and their versions? What role does this command play in ensuring that all dependencies are correctly installed?

3. Best Practices: Are there any recommended strategies or optimizations for integrating Poetry with Docker in a production environment to manage dependencies more effectively?

Thank you,
Eli

[radoering]

Is this indicative of a misconfiguration in our Docker setup, or is it considered a best practice under these circumstances?

With an empty cache locking can take a while. Normally, you do not have to lock again if you already have a valid lock file.

Could you clarify why the poetry lock --no-update command is necessary when the lock file should already detail all required dependencies and their versions? What role does this command play in ensuring that all dependencies are correctly installed?

Running poetry lock --no-update is not necessary if your lock file has been valid and you did not change pyproject.toml. If you have a valid lock file, you can just copy the pyproject.toml and poetry.lock and run poetry install without locking before.

I assume you are running into #9191 or similar. You have to update pkginfo in Poetry's own venv and clear the cache on the machine that produced the broken lock file. Relocking in the container probably works around the issue because you do not have a corrupt cache and you get a fresh Poetry installation with all its dependencies up to date.

Are there any recommended strategies or optimizations for integrating Poetry with Docker in a production environment to manage dependencies more effectively?

Nothing official, but https://github.com/orgs/python-poetry/discussions/1879 might be interesting for you.

[eli64s]

@radoering Awesome, this is helpful. Thanks for the quick reply and resources, much appreciated!