python-arango is not working without pip-install installation

[alexbakharew]

Hello!

I am uisng python-arango for benchmarking arangodb and elasticsearch. python-arango is not installed on the target machine but I am importing it in the following way:

# avoid using 'pip install arango-python' command
arango_path = os.getcwd() + "/../iresearch.deps/python-arango"
if arango_path not in sys.path:
    sys.path.insert(0, arango_path)

I followed the discussion in this issue and found following PR which broke our existing testing pipeline with this error message:

alexey@c4:/home/jenkins/workspace/arangodb-ANY-benchmarks-client/arangosearch-benchmarks$ python3 ./Benchmarks.py ../args.json arango
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/requests/__init__.py:78: RequestsDependencyWarning: urllib3 (1.26.14) or chardet (3.0.4) doesn't match a supported version!
  warnings.warn("urllib3 ({0}) or chardet ({1}) doesn't match a supported "
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/jenkins/workspace/arangodb-ANY-benchmarks-client/arangosearch-benchmarks/./Benchmarks.py", line 182, in <module>
    main()
  File "/home/jenkins/workspace/arangodb-ANY-benchmarks-client/arangosearch-benchmarks/./Benchmarks.py", line 128, in main
    ArangoInstance.prepare_environment(environment_config["arango"], engines["arango"]["endpoints"])
  File "/home/jenkins/workspace/arangodb-ANY-benchmarks-client/arangosearch-benchmarks/Arango.py", line 169, in prepare_environment
    remove_all_views(db)
  File "/home/jenkins/workspace/arangodb-ANY-benchmarks-client/arangosearch-benchmarks/Arango.py", line 109, in remove_all_views
    for view in db.views():
  File "/home/jenkins/workspace/arangodb-ANY-benchmarks-client/arangosearch-benchmarks/../iresearch.deps/python-arango/arango/database.py", line 2092, in views
    request = Request(method="get", endpoint="/_api/view")
  File "/home/jenkins/workspace/arangodb-ANY-benchmarks-client/arangosearch-benchmarks/../iresearch.deps/python-arango/arango/request.py", line 128, in __init__
    self.headers: Headers = normalize_headers(headers, driver_flags)
  File "/home/jenkins/workspace/arangodb-ANY-benchmarks-client/arangosearch-benchmarks/../iresearch.deps/python-arango/arango/request.py", line 12, in normalize_headers
    driver_header = generate_driver_header(driver_flags)
  File "/home/jenkins/workspace/arangodb-ANY-benchmarks-client/arangosearch-benchmarks/../iresearch.deps/python-arango/arango/request.py", line 31, in generate_driver_header
    driver_version: str = ".".join(version(name).split(".")[:3])  # Only keep semver
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/importlib/metadata.py", line 569, in version
    return distribution(distribution_name).version
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/importlib/metadata.py", line 542, in distribution
    return Distribution.from_name(distribution_name)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/importlib/metadata.py", line 196, in from_name
    raise PackageNotFoundError(name)
importlib.metadata.PackageNotFoundError: python-arango

Also I found the reason of the error above: python/cpython#94113

The problem is that importlib.metadata can't work with modules which are not installed using pip. From issue above I read that it is fixed for python 3.10 and above. But I use python 3.9.

So I have 2 questions:

1. In readme for python-arango it is stated that supported version of python is 3.8+. But we see that for this specific case it is not working. Is it a breaking change for python 3.8 compatibility?

2. The last question is about version retrieving. Is it possible to do it not in runtime? I think this is quite unnecessary overheading.

Thanks in advance!

[fferozbasha]

hi @alexbakharew , did you get it to work. Even am facing the same issue.
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'importlib.metadata'. Tried importing import_metadata manually. But could not do so. Any workaround?

[joowani]

I reverted the commit with importlib.metadata in latest release 7.5.7. The issue should be resolved now.

[fferozbasha]

thanks much @joowani . Shall test it with latest version again then.