Help with building without pip needed

[Photon89]

Custom Node Testing

• [x] I have tried disabling custom nodes and the issue persists (see how to disable custom nodes if you need help)

Your question

Hi guys,

I'm trying to build ComfyUI on Manjaro Linux (Arch based). It looks like I cannot use pip here, various python packages are available through Manjaros official repositories and user repositories (AUR). When trying to run pip, I get:

$ /usr/bin/python -m pip install -r /home/photon/ComfyUI/requirements.txt
error: externally-managed-environment

× This environment is externally managed
╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try 'pacman -S
    python-xyz', where xyz is the package you are trying to
    install.
    
    If you wish to install a non-Arch-packaged Python package,
    create a virtual environment using 'python -m venv path/to/venv'.
    Then use path/to/venv/bin/python and path/to/venv/bin/pip.
    
    If you wish to install a non-Arch packaged Python application,
    it may be easiest to use 'pipx install xyz', which will manage a
    virtual environment for you. Make sure you have python-pipx
    installed via pacman.

note: If you believe this is a mistake, please contact your Python installation or OS distribution provider. You can override this, at the risk of breaking your Python installation or OS, by passing --break-system-packages.
hint: See PEP 668 for the detailed specification.

Therefore, I tried installing all dependencies without pip. I could find almost all of them already packaged, only had to package one further dependency.

For the ComfyUI frontend I unpacked it and could load it with --front-end-root.

However, when launching ComfyUI, I get the following errors:

$ python main.py --cpu --port 8188 --front-end-root ../ComfyUI_frontend/ --disable-all-custom-nodes
Checkpoint files will always be loaded safely.
Total VRAM 15657 MB, total RAM 15657 MB
pytorch version: 2.7.0
Set vram state to: DISABLED
Device: cpu
Using sub quadratic optimization for attention, if you have memory or speed issues try using: --use-split-cross-attention
Python version: 3.13.3 (main, Apr  9 2025, 07:44:25) [GCC 14.2.1 20250207]
ComfyUI version: 0.3.41
[Prompt Server] web root: ../ComfyUI_frontend/
Skipping loading of custom nodes
Context impl SQLiteImpl.
Will assume non-transactional DDL.
No target revision found.
********** ERROR ***********

comfyui-workflow-templates is not installed.

Please install the updated requirements.txt file by running:
/usr/bin/python -m pip install -r /home/photon/ComfyUI/requirements.txt
If you are on the portable package you can run: update\update_comfyui.bat to solve this problem.

This error is happening because the ComfyUI frontend is no longer shipped as part of the main repo but as a pip package instead.

********** ERROR ***********
comfyui-embedded-docs package not found
Starting server

To see the GUI go to: http://127.0.0.1:8188

So, comfyui-workflow-templates and comfyui-embedded-docs are still missing.

Regarding comfyui-workflow-templates, I downloaded them from https://github.com/Comfy-Org/workflow_templates and copied the templates folder into ComfyUI_frontend/public/, however it looks like they aren't picked up.

When accessing http://127.0.0.1:8188, I get a blank white page. The web browser's console reports:

GET http://127.0.0.1:8188/api/userdata/user.css net::ERR_ABORTED 404 (Not Found)
GET http://127.0.0.1:8188/user.css net::ERR_ABORTED 404 (Not Found)
GET http://127.0.0.1:8188/materialdesignicons.min.css net::ERR_ABORTED 404 (Not Found)

Failed to load module script: Expected a JavaScript-or-Wasm module script but the server responded with a MIME type of "application/octet-stream". Strict MIME type checking is enforced for module scripts per HTML spec.

<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes"> is deprecated. Please include <meta name="mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">
uBOL: Generic cosmetic filtering stopped because no more DOM changes

So I am wondering:

1. Are the errors regarding missing docs and templates fatal and the reason for the blank page shown in the browser? Or are the missing .css files the actual reason and the errors are not fatal?
2. Why are the .css files missing?
3. How can I package the templates and docs such that ComfyUI picks them up, without using pip?

Thanks for any input!

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