Move commandline interface to typer

[schaefi]

This commit moves the kiwi commandline and plugin interface to typer and drops the use of docopt. Typer is based on python type hints and allows for a more modern way to define Cli interfaces and auto completion, even for plugins. Also docopt is split into an old and a next generation variant and allows us to get rid of spec file hacks as well as documentation rendering hacks.

[schaefi]

There are still open tasks before we can consider this change to go in

• stackbuild plugin needs cli.py: TBD by @schaefi
• box plugin needs cli.py: TBD by @schaefi
• is python-typer package available in all distros ?

[schaefi]

@Conan-Kudo I'm mostly interested in getting the open questions from the checklist answered, so no need to do an in-depth review of the code changes as it's time consuming. Thanks much

[Conan-Kudo]

We can't drop Python 3.9 support since that's required for CentOS/RHEL 9.

[schaefi]

We can't drop Python 3.9 support since that's required for CentOS/RHEL 9.

I found a fix to make it work on 3.9 too

[schaefi]

@Conan-Kudo I finished the Cli change and also updated the plugins. The plugins continues to support both docopt and typer such that they can continue to work also with older versions of kiwi. The upstream kiwi should change to typer and the interface is a drop-in-replacement such that there should be no difference in the former caller semantic.

The only open question is if the typer python module is available in all distros we support. I did a short test on Virtualization:Appliances:Staging/python-kiwi and it would build the package for all targets that exists there except for ALP which is an issue that I need to resolve prior merge

Also I appreciate your feedback with regards to the other OS'es

Thanks

[schaefi]

And there is also the question on the min version of typer in the pyproject.toml to be ok or not

[schaefi]

I'll give it a test on Staging

[schaefi]

I'll give it a test on Staging

ok some results here.

1. ALP needs typer, it doesn't exist there. I built the package from TW for ALP, no problems just works
2. The typer version 0.7.0 which is used on Debian 12 and others is too old and too bugy. I added patches to make it run but it produces wrong output and has a lot of issues which are also reported on the typer git. The minimum version of typer that works and is available is 0.9.0. I added that version as a minimum requirement for now. This leads to the following targets on Staging not building

xUbuntu_23.04_x86_64  x86_64     python-kiwi      unresolvable*
xUbuntu_23.04_aarch64 aarch64    python-kiwi      unresolvable*
Fedora_38             aarch64    python-kiwi      unresolvable*
Fedora_38             x86_64     python-kiwi      unresolvable*
Debian_12_x86_64      x86_64     python-kiwi      unresolvable*
Debian_12_aarch64     aarch64    python-kiwi      unresolvable*

How can we go from there ? Or does that mean we leave this PR open until our OS Matrix allows the move smoothly ?

[schaefi]

I also figured typer 0.9.0 only works for python version < 3.8 because it imports typing_extensions which no longer exists starting with py3.8. This is especially a problem for Leap who added the python 3.11 stack and we only provide kiwi for Leap for 3.11 (the other python version there is 3.6 which is too old for kiwi v10.x.x) So typer 0.9.0 doesn't play with python 3.11 but fortunately the backports project offers the latest typer, so I don't see an issue here

[schaefi]

Overall such a change is a pita but I had hoped with the kiwi v10.x.x constraints it could be done... maybe a mistake ?

[Conan-Kudo]

We could consider this for kiwi 11 and decide we do a kiwi 11 next year?

[schaefi]

We could consider this for kiwi 11 and decide we do a kiwi 11 next year?

ok, I did that on this PR and the plugin PRs. btw are Fedora 38 and xUbuntu_23.04 still supported targets ?

[Conan-Kudo]

No. Our minimum for Fedora is currently Fedora 40. And Ubuntu is at 24.04.

[schaefi]

No. Our minimum for Fedora is currently Fedora 40. And Ubuntu is at 24.04.

ok I dropped those. For the Debian 12 part I added an updated typer to the Staging project which allows me to finally run all integration tests with a changed kiwi that contains this new cli interface. All tests built which is good.

So I will keep this and the plugin PRs open with a kiwi-11 label set to be merged in 2026