py_grpcio: Patch the setup.py to only link against the spack provided abseil

[mmancini-skao]

This pull request introduces an update to the patching logic for the py_grpcio package to improve compatibility with custom installation prefixes for the abseil-cpp dependency. The change ensures that the build process correctly locates shared libraries in the appropriate directory, rather than assuming a system path.

Dependency patch improvement:

• Updated the patch method in py_grpcio/package.py to replace a hardcoded search for libabsl_*.so in /usr with a dynamic search in the spack abseil-cpp library prefix.

[adamjstewart]

A bit similar to @haampie's recent #3354.

[Giuncan]

Hi @mmancini-skao , I compiled this package different times, changing version and/or dependecies but I always got an runtime error regarding undefined symbol: _ZN4absl12lts_2024072210IsNotFoundERKNS0_6StatusE when I tried to import grpc.

With your first patch, I still had the same issue because the prefix.lib folder that you were using:

self.spec["abseil-cpp"].prefix.lib

does not exist in my abseil-cpp@20240722 spack installation (as also highlighted by @adamjstewart). Indeed, the original setup.py code use a wildcard also for the library folder: lib*/.

My suggestion is to simplify and generalize your filter_file in this way:

            filter_file(
                r'pathlib.Path("/usr")',
                r'pathlib.Path("{}")'.format(self.spec["abseil-cpp"].prefix),
                "setup.py",
                string=True,
            )

---

Today I saw that the patch is changed, and now the path lib should exist because you are using self.spec["abseil-cpp"].libs[0]. However, why should we use only the first library? In the original setup.py it loops over all the possible libraries.

Cheers

[mmancini-skao]

Thank you for both your comments @Giuncan and @adamjstewart!
In the last commit I think I should be covering both the problem of the .so and .dynlib as well as the fact that the .lib folder does not exist on some systems.

Unfortunately, @Giuncan your patch wouldnt work for the dynlib.
To generalize the approach I also tried to use the .libs as a list to pass to the sorted in the setup.py but that didnt work on our system (ubuntu 22.04) as the .libs was empty.
I tested it by running

spack fetch py-grpcio
spack patch py-grpcio
spack cd py-grpcio

making sure that abseil-cpp was already installed.

Most probably I am missing something. Let me know what you think.

[adamjstewart]

To generalize the approach I also tried to use the .libs as a list to pass to the sorted in the setup.py but that didnt work on our system (ubuntu 22.04) as the .libs was empty.

Can we fix this?