Build Configuration

Configuring Chainguard Libraries for Python on your workstation
  8 min read

The configuration for the use of Chainguard Libraries depends on how you’ve set up your build tools and CI/CD workflows. At a high level, adopting the use of Chainguard Libraries in your development, build, and deployment workflows involves the following steps:

  • If you or an administrator have not done so already, set up your organization’s repository manager to use Chainguard Libraries for Python.
  • Log into your organization’s repository manager and retrieve credentials for the build tool you are configuration.
  • Configure your development or build tool with this information.
  • Remove local caches on workstations and CI/CD pipelines. This step ensures that dependencies are preferentially sourced from Chainguard Libraries.
  • Finally, confirm that your development tools and CI/CD workflows are correctly ingesting dependencies from Chainguard Libraries.

These changes must be performed on all workstations of individual developers and other engineers running relevant application builds. They must also be performed on any build tool such as Jenkins, TeamCity, GitHub Actions, or other infrastructure that draws in dependencies.

Retrieving authentication credentials

To configure any build tool, you must first access credentials from your organization’s repository manager or for direct access.

Cloudsmith

The following steps allow you to determine the URL and authentication details for accessing your organization’s Cloudsmith repository manager.

  1. Log into Cloudsmith.
  2. Select the Repositories tab and click on the python-all repository.
  3. Select the Packages tab.
  4. Select Push/Pull Packages on the right.
  5. Choose the Python format.
  6. Select your desired authentication method for Entitlement tokens and copy the URL to use in your build tool - for example https://dl.cloudsmith.io/.../exampleorg/python-all/python/simple/. In the URL ... is replaced with a default token or your personal token depending on your selection and exampleorg is replaced with the name of your organization. The URL contains both the name of the repository python-all as well as python as an identifier for the format.
  7. Alternatively, use the API Key and copy the URL to use in your build tool
    • for example https://username:{{apiKey}}@dl.cloudsmith.io/basic/exampleorg/python-all/python/simple/. Replace username and exampleorg with your Cloudsmith details and replace {{apiKey}} with the API key from the Personal API Keys section from the drop down on your username.

Note that for use with build tools you must include the simple/ context so that the package index is used successfully.

JFrog Artifactory

The following steps allow you to determine the identity token and URL for accessing your organization’s JFrog Artifactory repository manager.

  1. Select Administration in the top navigation bar.
  2. Select Repositories in the left hand navigation.
  3. Select the Virtual tab in the repositories view.
  4. Locate the python-all* repository row and press the three dots () in the last column on the right.
  5. Select Set Me Up in the dialog.
  6. Select Generate Token & Create Instructions
  7. Copy the generated token value to use as the password for authentication.
  8. Select Generate Settings.
  9. Copy the value from one of the URL fields. They are all identical. For example, https://exampleorg.jfrog.io/artifactory/python-all with exampleorg. Note that for use with build tools you must append simple/ to the URL so that the package index is used successfully - https://exampleorg.jfrog.io/artifactory/python-all/simple/.

Sonatype Nexus Repository

The following steps allow you to determine the URL and authentication details for accessing your organization’s Sonatype Nexus repository group.

  1. Click Browse in the Welcome view or the browse icon (cube) in the top navigation bar.
  2. Locate the URL column for the python-all repository group and press copy. The URL should take the following format: https://repo.example.com/repository/python-all/. Note that for use with build tools you must append simple/ to the URL so that the package index is used successfully - https://repo.example.com/repository/python-all/simple/.
  3. No further configuration is necessary if your repository manager is configured for anonymous access with Security - Anonymous Access - Access - Allow anonymous users to access the server is activated. If authentication is required, you must use the relevant details such as username and password in your build tool configuration.

Direct access

The build configuration to retrieve artifacts directly from the Chainguard Libraries for Python repositories requires authentication with username and password from a pull token as detailed in access documentation. Note that there are multiple repositories:

  • https://libraries.cgr.dev/python/ with the simple index at https://libraries.cgr.dev/python/simple
  • https://libraries.cgr.dev/python-remediated with the simple index at https://libraries.cgr.dev/python-remediated/simple

Configuring build tools

Once you have credentials and the index URL from your organization’s repository manager, you’re ready to set up specific build tools for local development or CI/CD.

Authentication

pip, uv, poetry, and other Python build and packaging tools have dedicated support for configuring authentication to the repository manager or the Chainguard Libraries for Python directly. As an alternative that works across tools and is often preferred, use .netrc for authentication.

pip

The pip tool is the most widely used utility for installing Python packages. In this section, we use the credentials from your organization’s repository manager to configure pip to ingest dependencies from Chainguard Libraries.

First, let’s clear your local pip cache to ensure that packages are sourced from Chainguard Libraries for Python:

pip cache purge

To update pip to use our repository manager’s URL globally, create or edit your ~/.pip/pip.conf file. You may need to create the ~/.pip folder as well. For example:

mkdir -p ~/.pip
nano ~/.pip/pip.conf

Update this configuration file with the following, replacing <repository-url> with the URL provided by your repository manager including the simple/ context:

[global]
index-url = <repository-url>

Updating this global configuration affects all projects built on the workstation. Alternately, if your project uses a requirements.txt file in projects, you can add the following to it to configure on a project-by-project basis:

--index-url <repository-url>
package-name==version

Note the different syntax for index-url in the two files.

Refer to the official documentation for configuring authentication with pip if you are not using .netrc for authentication.

When using direct access to the Chainguard Libraries for Python repository with pip, you must ensure the following are set in your configuration file:

  • Replace any / in the username value CG_PULLTOKEN_USERNAME with _.
  • Ensure the simple context is used for the URL.
  • The password value CG_PULLTOKEN_PASSWORD remains unchanged.

Example for requirements.txt:

--index-url https://CG_PULLTOKEN_USERNAME:CG_PULLTOKEN_PASSWORD@libraries.cgr.dev/python/simple/

Example for ~/.pip/pip.conf:

[global]
index-url = https://CG_PULLTOKEN_USERNAME:CG_PULLTOKEN_PASSWORD@libraries.cgr.dev/python/simple/

Note that pip does not support installing Python libraries from multiple repositories while prioritizing one over another. If you are using pip and prefer to pull from multiple repositories while prioritizing Chainguard Libraries for Python, we recommend using a repository manager. Alternatively, other Python package managers below provide support for index priority resolution behavior.

Poetry

Poetry helps you declare, manage, and install dependencies of Python projects, and can be used with Chainguard Libraries for Python."

List the Python package caches used by your Poetry project:

poetry cache list

The following commands clear the default cache, the cache for a repository named pypi, and the cache of packages of the repo python-all from your repository manager as configured in the global configuration:

poetry cache clear --all _default_cache
poetry cache clear --all pypi
poetry cache clear --all python-all

Set up HTTP authentication to the repository python-all on your repository manager with the username example and the password secret in your project directory:

poetry config http-basic.python-all example secret

The authentication is used for the python-all repository that you add to the pyproject.toml with the following command:

poetry source add python-all https://repo.example.com/../python-all/simple/

Example URLs including the required simple context:

  • JFrog Artifactory: https://example.jfrog.io/artifactory/api/pypi/python-all/simple/
  • Sonatype Nexus: https://repo.example.com:8443/repository/python-all/simple/

The following configuration is added:

[[tool.poetry.source]]
name = "python-all"
url = "https://repo.example.com/../python-all/simple/"
priority = "primary"

Trigger a new download of the dependencies:

poetry install

If necessary, you can fix or even regenerate your poetry.lock file:

poetry lock
poetry lock --regenerate

Proceed to build your project:

poetry build

For direct access to Chainguard Libraries for Python with Poetry, use your username CG_PULLTOKEN_USERNAME and password CG_PULLTOKEN_PASSWORD values from the pull token creation and the URL with the simple context https://libraries.cgr.dev/python/simple/:

poetry config http-basic.chainguard CG_PULLTOKEN_USERNAME CG_PULLTOKEN_PASSWORD

The authentication is used for the chainguard repository that you add to the pyproject.toml with the following command:

poetry source add chainguard https://libraries.cgr.dev/python/simple/

The Poetry documentation contains more information about your project build, dependencies, versions, and other aspects.

In order to install Python libraries from multiple repositories with Chainguard Libraries for Python as the priority, poetry supports setting a primary package source. You can use this to configure Chainguard Libraries for Python as the first choice for any library access, with a fallback to the PyPI public index.

uv

uv is a fast Python package and project manager written in Rust. It uses PyPI by default, but also supports the use of alternative package indexes.

To update your global configuration to use your organization’s repository manager with uv, create or edit the ~/.config/uv/uv.toml configuration file. You may also need to create the ~/.config/uv/ folder first. For example:

mkdir -p ~/.config/uv
nano ~/.config/uv/uv.toml

Add the following to your uv global configuration file:

[[tool.uv.index]]
name = "<repository-manager-name>"
url = "<repository-url>"

Add the name for your repository, such as corppypi, within the quotes.

Replace the <repository-url> with the URL provided by your repository manager including the simple/ context.

Note that updating the global configuration affects all projects built on the workstation. Alternately, you can update each project by adding the same configuration in pyproject.toml.

Refer to the official documentation for configuring authentication with uv and using alternative package indexes if you are not using .netrc for authentication.

For direct access to Chainguard Libraries for Python with uv, use .netrc or your username CG_PULLTOKEN_USERNAME and password CG_PULLTOKEN_PASSWORD values from the pull token creation and the URL with the simple context https://libraries.cgr.dev/python/simple/:

Example for pyproject.toml:

[[tool.uv.index]]
name = "chainguard"
url = "https://CG_PULLTOKEN_USERNAME:CG_PULLTOKEN_PASSWORD@libraries.cgr.dev/python/simple/

Example for uv.toml:

[[index]]
url = "https://CG_PULLTOKEN_USERNAME:CG_PULLTOKEN_PASSWORD@libraries.cgr.dev/python/simple/

In order to install Python libraries from multiple repositories with Chainguard Libraries for Python as the priority, uv supports searching across multiple indexes while setting a priority index. You can use this to configure Chainguard Libraries for Python as the first choice for any library access, with a fallback to the PyPI public index. In addition, if you are consuming from our remediated Python libraries index, we recommend setting the index-strategy setting to unsafe-best-match. This will ensure that index resolution continues to work when remediated libraries have dependencies on non-remediated libraries.

Last updated: 2025-04-07 14:11