Ran behavision-setup in a fresh Linux container: Python 3.12, nothing
else, the release contents mounted read-only the way Program Files or a
shared drive would be. It failed, and then it failed differently, and
both failures would have been the client's first experience.
1. `pip install <folder>` makes setuptools write behavision.egg-info
INTO the folder. The folder is read-only wherever a release is
sensibly unzipped, so: "could not create 'behavision.egg-info':
Read-only file system". The release now ships a wheel - pure Python,
buildable anywhere, nothing to build on the shop PC, and pip never
touches the unzipped folder. Source stays as a fallback and is copied
somewhere writable first.
2. The engine's paths.py knows two worlds - frozen (ProgramData) and a
checkout (the repo root) - and a pip-installed engine is neither. It
resolved its state root to site-packages: database there, camera
list there, and its generated API credential in a folder the app
never reads, while the app looked in ProgramData. Every call would be
401 on a stock install, with nothing in either log saying why. The
same disease as the Mac checkout two days ago, now in production
shape.
engine.ChildEnv is the one place the engine's environment is built,
used by the desktop app, the headless agent and the installer's own
smoke test. It passes BEHAVISION_DATA_DIR = this process's state
root, which paths.py honours ahead of every other rule, so the two
halves agree by construction however the engine was installed.
It also seeds config/default.yaml into the state root: a package in
site-packages has no config beside it to seed from.
Re-run on the same clean container: seven steps, all pass, models
downloaded, engine started and answered, and its data/ landed beside
agent.json - not in site-packages.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KGcjxF1cNLcuwc3DAPcnfj
The Go halves of this product cross-compile to Windows from any machine.
The engine does not: PyInstaller bundles the interpreter and the native
wheels of the machine it runs on, so a frozen engine can only be built on
Windows. That one fact was the entire reason no release had ever been
cut - two of the three binaries were ready for weeks.
behavision-setup installs the engine from source instead. It finds a
Python, builds a private virtual environment beside the database,
installs the engine into it, downloads the models, records how to start
it in the same agent.json the app reads, and then starts it and waits
for its API to answer.
That last step is the point. An installer that reports success and
leaves a shop with an engine that will not run has done worse than
failing: the failure surfaces later, to somebody who did not install it.
The trade, since whoever runs this is standing in a shop: it needs
Python and internet at install time and takes minutes, where a frozen
build needs neither. What it buys is a release that exists.
Details that are not incidental:
- `py -3` is tried before `python` on Windows. The launcher is what the
official installer puts on PATH; `python` there is often the Store
stub that prints an advert and exits 9009.
- a virtual environment, not the system Python. A shop PC may have
Python for something else, and the engine pins numpy below 2.0 -
installing that into a shared interpreter breaks the other thing
months later and silently.
- EngineExe is written absolute. The app resolves a relative one
against its install root under Program Files, where no interpreter
lives.
- pip's output is shown, not swallowed. When it fails on a proxy or a
missing build tool it says exactly what is wrong, and hiding that
leaves the operator with "setup failed" and nothing to act on.
- the console pauses before closing. Double-clicked from Explorer, a
program that finishes closes instantly and success and failure look
identical.
Verified as far as a Mac can: `pip install .` builds the wheel and
resolves every dependency, and `python -m behavision` then runs from
site-packages rather than the working directory - which is the mechanism
this depends on and had never been exercised, because the project has
only ever been run out of its own checkout.
NOT verified: any of it on Windows. Nothing here has run on the target
platform, and the `py -3` path and the ProgramData layout are exactly
where that will show.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Pcn9asw19WGBfCEaHvNug6
