Currently, we apply patch 189 bconditionally:

    %if %{with rpmwheels}
    %patch189 -p1
    rm Lib/ensurepip/_bundled/*.whl
    %endif

Since 3.9 no longer has the %ifarched lib64 patch (102), it would really be convenient if we can finally get rid of this antipattern and adapt 189 to be applicable at any time, like this:

    %autosetup -p1
    ...
    %if %{with rpmwheels}
    rm Lib/ensurepip/_bundled/*.whl
    %endif

The necessary code change would be: ensurepip module "simply" prefers the bundled wheels when they are present, falls back to /usr/share/python-wheels if the bundled wheels are not there.

That could also make the patch little bit more upstreamable.


The idea to upstream this patch is as follows:

 1. When Python is built, there is a configure option (e.g. --shared-wheels-directory=/usr/share/python-wheels)

 2. The value is baked into sysconfig (e.g. sysconfig.get_config_var('SHARED_WHEELS_DIRECTORY') == '/usr/share/python-wheels' or None)

 3. When ensurepip is called, it checks the SHARED_WHEELS_DIRECTORY value:

 3a. If it is None, it takes wheels from _bundled
 3b. If it is set to an existing directory, it takes wheels from that directory
 3c. If it is set to anything else, it fails

 4. The wheels' versions and filenames need to be figured out at runtime (as we do now in patch 189).