[DEPR]: openedx-platform pip-compile compatibility exports (requirements/edx/*.txt and equivalents)

[irfanuddinahmad]

RFC Start Date

N/A -- Already Accepted

Target Plan Accepted Date

N/A -- Already Accepted

Target Transition Unblocked Date

Jul 24, 2026

(PR to unblock transition: openedx/openedx-platform#38915)

Earliest Breaking Changes Unblocked Date

2026-08-05

Rationale

As part of openedx-platform's pip-compile → pyproject.toml + uv migration (public-engineering#543, landed in openedx-platform#38915), pyproject.toml + uv.lock are now the actual source of truth for openedx-platform's Python dependencies.

To avoid breaking external tooling that still does pip install -r requirements/edx/base.txt directly, that PR kept a set of machine-generated compatibility exports (uv export --frozen --no-hashes ... output, regenerated by make compile-requirements) at their old paths. These were meant as a temporary bridge, not a permanent parallel format -- indefinitely hand-generating pip-compatible exports alongside uv.lock defeats part of the point of the migration, and adds ongoing maintenance burden (e.g. the exports have already needed one follow-up fix for a uv-version-dependent formatting difference).

This ticket proposes removing those compatibility exports once known consumers have transitioned to reading from pyproject.toml/uv.lock directly (via uv sync/uv export) instead.

Description

Files to be removed from openedx/openedx-platform (all under version control, all currently regenerated by make compile-requirements):

• requirements/edx/base.txt, requirements/edx/assets.txt, requirements/edx/development.txt
• requirements/edx-sandbox/base.txt
• scripts/xblock/requirements.txt
• scripts/user_retirement/requirements/base.txt, scripts/user_retirement/requirements/testing.txt
• scripts/structures_pruning/requirements/base.txt, scripts/structures_pruning/requirements/testing.txt

Known consumers that need to transition first (found via a GitHub code search across the openedx org and overhangio/tutor; there may be others not surfaced by that search):

• overhangio/tutor -- tutor/templates/build/openedx/Dockerfile does a BuildKit bind-mount of requirements/edx/base.txt and requirements/edx/assets.txt from the edx-platform build stage and pip installs them directly (production image), and separately does pip install -r requirements/edx/development.txt in its development build stage (used for tutor dev images). This is a hard break: every Tutor-based image build (production and dev) fails the moment these files are gone. Needs to switch to installing from pyproject.toml/uv.lock (e.g. uv sync --frozen --no-default-groups or uv export) instead. See overhangio/tutor#1434 for the heads-up filed on their side.
• openedx/edx-enterprise -- the weekly Upgrade Requirements GitHub Action (.github/workflows/upgrade-python-requirements.yml, runs every Friday) invokes make upgrade, whose Makefile does curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openedx/openedx-platform/master/requirements/edx/base.txt (with -f, so a 404 fails the job) to build requirements/edx-platform-constraints.txt -- "treat production package versions from openedx-platform as local constraints for testing." This is a hard break on a ~weekly cadence. Needs to source those constraints from uv.lock instead (e.g. by fetching uv.lock and parsing [[package]] entries, or from a uv export of it).
• openedx/openedx-translations -- .github/workflows/extract-translation-source-files.yml conditionally does pip install -r translations/edx-platform/requirements/edx/base.txt guarded by if test -f $EDX_BASE_REQS. This is a soft break -- it degrades gracefully to skipping that install, but should be updated to stop looking for the file.
• openedx/repo-tools -- find_dependencies.py's PY_REQS fallback list tries requirements/edx/base.txt first, then requirements/base.txt, then requirements.txt. This is a soft break (manual/occasional-use tool, not CI-gating) -- should be updated to also understand pyproject.toml/uv.lock, similar to the fix proposed for find_python_dependencies in repo-tools#735.

Replacement: pyproject.toml + uv.lock are the source of truth. Anyone needing a flat/frozen requirements-style file can run uv export --frozen --no-hashes --no-default-groups --no-emit-project (or --group <name> for a specific dependency group) themselves against those files, or better, adopt uv sync/uv pip install directly.

Task List

• Update overhangio/tutor's Dockerfile to install from pyproject.toml/uv.lock instead of requirements/edx/{base,assets}.txt
• Update openedx/edx-enterprise's Makefile/upgrade-python-requirements.yml to source constraints from uv.lock instead of requirements/edx/base.txt
• Update openedx/openedx-translations's extraction workflow to stop referencing requirements/edx/base.txt
• Merge repo-tools#735 and update find_dependencies.py's PY_REQS fallback similarly
• Post this ticket in #risky-changes once its status is updated to "Transition Unblocked"
• Remove the compatibility export files from openedx-platform once the above are done and the Breaking Changes Unblocked Date has passed