Bundling Numpy in an add-on

[Shigeyuki]

Numpy is relatively cumbersome to bundle with add-on because it includes the C language.
Need to use the same Numpy wheel as the Python version of Anki. The latest Anki for desktop on Windows and Mac uses Python 3.9. Maybe numpy 2.0.2 is the last version that supports python 3.9. numpy·PyPI

e.g. The Numpy wheel for Python 3.9 on Windows is probably “numpy-2.0.2-pp39-pypy39_pp73-win_amd64.whl”. Put it in the add-on or download (or create your own Wheel) and unzip it then add the path to the sys.path. This explanation and code by developer Abdo will be helpful.

Add support for dependencies in addons

Vendoring is usually as simple as doing the following for me: pip install -r requirements.txt -t src/vendor. Adding src/vendor to sys.path, or maybe using a modified version of the snippet here where you don’t mess around with sys.modules/sys.path, and instead just use the object you get from importlib.util.module_from_spec to avoid conflicts. (I usually just append/insert to sys.path, and have not tested my suggestion yet) It becomes a real pain when C extensions are involved. For this case…

Note that Linux users often use the latest version of Python, not Anki version 3.9.
In this case it is necessary to identify their Python version and architecture. But Linux users are only a few percent so if it’s difficult you may want to exclude them from support.

Also in the future Anki may upgrade the Python version (I don’t know when that will be. Upgrade from Python 3.9.18 · Issue #4022 · ankitects/anki · GitHub). In this case the python 3.9 wheel will be broken so it will be necessary to update the wheel.