pyproject.toml not compatible with editable mode

[sfluegel05]

In our installation, we advise developers to install chebai in editable mode (pip install -e .). However, this breaks since we changed from setup.py to pyproject.toml.

@jcapp4 got the following the following error:

ERROR: File "setup.py" not found. Directory cannot be installed in editable mode: python-chebai
(A "pyproject.toml" file was found, but editable mode currently requires a setup.py based build.)

@aditya0by0 Can you check how this is supposed to work with a pyproject.toml?

[aditya0by0]

I think he needs to upgrade his pip version as mentioned here: pypa/hatch#606

This error arises because editable installs (pip install -e .) traditionally required a setup.py, and although PEP 660 introduced support for editable installs with pyproject.toml, not all build backends support it yet (especially the old versions).

We need to update the backend in pyproject.toml to use setuptools 64+, which supports PEP 660.

[build-system]
requires = ["setuptools>=64", "wheel"]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

My environment has below versions:

Package    Version
---------- -------
pip        25.1
setuptools 78.1.1
wheel      0.45.1

and the latest version for setuptools is 80.9.0 https://pypi.org/project/setuptools/

[aditya0by0]

I will set the verision given in below documentation
https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/guides/writing-pyproject-toml/#declaring-the-build-backend

[sfluegel05]

@jcapp4 Can you pull the latest version from dev, upgrade pip and try to install it in editable mode?

[jcapp4]

upgrading pip did resolve the error .