grpc __strdup() not found in python3.6-alpine arm - python-3.6

Question

When using google libraries that require grpc we are running into this error.
The environment is docker arm python3.6-alpine with ...
grpcio>=1.33.2
google-cloud-pubsub>=2.1.0
google-api-python-client>=1.12.5
google-auth>=1.23.0
In our dockerfile we are installing
WORKDIR /tmp
RUN set -ex \
&& apk add --no-cache --virtual .build-deps \
cmake \
curl \
g++ \
gcc \
jpeg-dev \
libffi-dev \
libjpeg \
make \
musl-dev \
postgresql-dev \
python3-dev \
tzdata \
zlib \
zlib-dev
... later on
RUN pip3 install -r requirements.txt
and I even added libc6-compat and tried that.
also I added alpines build-base and alpine-sdk to try to cover all the bases.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/runpy.py", line 193, in _run_module_as_main
"__main__", mod_spec)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/runpy.py", line 85, in _run_code
exec(code, run_globals)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/...", line 48, in <module>
from ... import...
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/...", line 13, in <module>
from google.cloud import pubsub_v1
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/cloud/pubsub_v1/__init__.py", line 17, in <module>
from google.cloud.pubsub_v1 import types
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/cloud/pubsub_v1/types.py", line 36, in <module>
from google.pubsub_v1.types import pubsub as pubsub_gapic_types
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/pubsub_v1/__init__.py", line 18, in <module>
from .services.publisher import PublisherClient
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/pubsub_v1/services/publisher/__init__.py", line 18, in <module>
from .client import PublisherClient
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/pubsub_v1/services/publisher/client.py", line 27, in <module>
from google.api_core import gapic_v1 # type: ignore
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/api_core/gapic_v1/__init__.py", line 18, in <module>
from google.api_core.gapic_v1 import config
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/api_core/gapic_v1/config.py", line 23, in <module>
import grpc
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/grpc/__init__.py", line 23, in <module>
from grpc._cython import cygrpc as _cygrpc
ImportError: Error relocating /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/grpc/_cython/cygrpc.cpython-36m-arm-linux-gnueabihf.so: __strdup: symbol not found
This works fine in x64 alpine. So far we are only having issue in the arm version.
Any idea how to resolve this?

Answer 1

I switched to FROM --platform=linux/arm/v7 python:3.8-alpine and added some deps
RUN set -ex \
&& apk add --no-cache --virtual .build-deps \
cmake \
curl \
g++ \
gcc \
jpeg-dev \
libffi-dev \
libjpeg \
make \
musl-dev \
musl \
postgresql-dev \
python3-dev \
tzdata \
zlib \
zlib-dev \
libc6-compat \
libc-dev \
alpine-sdk \
build-base \
linux-headers \
cython \
c-ares-dev \
gdbm \
libffi
Now it works.
It seems that as ARM becomes more mainstream there will be better support and such.
Multiple times now we have had no issues building on x86_64 but lots of issues with the ARM builds (mostly with the google libraries).
I still don't know what caused the original problem. I only solved this by chance. I kept trying different things.
I found that alpine has py3-grpcio and py3-google-api-core adn others available as an apk.
So I added those.
On inspection of the package I saw it is v1.17.0
py3-google-api-core: Fetching https://distfiles.alpinelinux.org/distfiles/google-api-core-1.17.0.tar.gz
If you look in the google source for the python pubsub you can see in versions <= 1.4.2 (I think):
dependencies = [
# google-api-core[grpc] 1.17.0 causes problems, thus restricting its
# version until the issue gets fixed.
# https://github.com/googleapis/python-pubsub/issues/74
"google-api-core[grpc] >= 1.14.0, < 1.17.0",
"grpc-google-iam-v1 >= 0.12.3, < 0.13dev",
'enum34; python_version < "3.4"',
]
Notice the first comment.
"Of course", I thought. Why would it be working versions.
But in the alpine package source I noticed that it is using python3.8 so that is why I switched our dockerfile from python3.6 to python3.8. So I guess ultimately even though I did not end up using the alpine py3-* packages they did help lead me to a solution :)