Making custom nodes installable via pip

[Chaoses-Ib]

I noticed that this project is adding pyproject.toml to a lot of custom nodes. I'd like to ask if you are also interested in making custom nodes installable via pip. I've done some research about this and found that by using some special options in pyproject.toml, most custom nodes can be packaged and uploaded to PyPI without changing the project structure. Adding this to Comfy-PR should be simple since it's just adding more text to pyproject.toml and it's compatible with ComfyUI Registry.

For example, adding the following content to a custom node:

[project]
# CHANGE: The project name
name = "ComfyUI_Ib_CustomNodes"
version = "0.1.0"
# description = '...'
readme = "README.md"
# requires-python = ">=3.8"
# license = "MIT"
keywords = ["comfyui"]
dynamic = ["dependencies"]

[project.urls]
# CHANGE: Homepage, mostly the GitHub repository
Homepage = "https://github.com/Chaoses-Ib/ComfyUI_Ib_CustomNodes"
comfyui-legacy = "https://github.com/Chaoses-Ib/comfyui-legacy"

[build-system]
requires = ["hatchling", "hatch-requirements-txt"]
build-backend = "hatchling.build"

[tool.hatch.metadata.hooks.requirements_txt]
# CHANGE: Remove this section if there is no requirements.txt
files = ["requirements.txt"]

[tool.hatch.build.targets.sdist]
packages = ["."]

[tool.hatch.build.targets.wheel]
packages = ["."]
exclude = [
  "*.md",
  "/images",
  "/docs",
  "/examples",
  "/workflow_examples",
  "/tests",
]

[tool.hatch.build.targets.sdist.sources]
# CHANGE: Package name. Must be an valid Python id (no dashes)
"." = "ComfyUI_Ib_CustomNodes"

[tool.hatch.build.targets.wheel.sources]
# CHANGE: Same as above
"." = "ComfyUI_Ib_CustomNodes"

[project.entry-points."comfyui_legacy.custom_nodes"]
# CHANGE: Same as above
ComfyUI_Ib_CustomNodes = "ComfyUI_Ib_CustomNodes"

Then the custom node can be installed via pip:

pip install git+https://github.com/Chaoses-Ib/ComfyUI_Ib_CustomNodes.git

One problem with this is ComfyUI won't look up nodes installed via pip. This can be solved by installing a special custom node to loading them. This is already done in ComfyScript, but if you're interested, I can split the related code to a separate repo.

I've already done this change to some custom nodes, including:

• civitai_comfy_nodes
• comfyui-tooling-nodes
• ComfyUI_Ib_CustomNodes

[snomiao]

@yoland68 Could you help me check this out?

[telamonian]

@Chaoses-Ib There are already several efforts underway to do just this in ComfyUI core. My (completely unbiased, of course) preference is for comfyanonymous/ComfyUI#3608. In general, I do think it would be best to reuse as much of the existing Python machinery as possible, such as using the entry_point mechanism to do the node finding/loading. Please see also CEP 1.

[Chaoses-Ib]

Nice PR. I know comfyanonymous/ComfyUI#298 has done something similar, but it has changed too many things and I'm afraid it'll never be merged. It'll be nice to see this kind of mechanism being merged one day.

In general, I do think it would be best to reuse as much of the existing Python machinery as possible

I have the same idea. That's why I'm here to ask whether you are willing to add this. I think it will be easier to first add this to custom nodes instead of changing their project structure, since that will break the old and current version of ComfyUI.

[Le09]

It would be nice to eventually have ComfyUI and custom nodes installable via pip. Right now there are a number of ways that deviate from the standard that are a bit confusing to get into. And maybe more importantly it causes a proliferation of ad-hoc solutions.