typing_extensions requirement inconsistency

[minusf]

It is claimed in the documentation and in pyproject.toml that typing_extensions is needed only for python>=3.10. However if plugins are enabled, beets crashes with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'typing_extensions'.

The plugins functionality is trying to import typing_extensions unconditionally.

I think it would be more user friendly and practical to have the same requirements as the official plugins. (requests is a similar plugin hidden dependency that needs to be added manually to a newly installed beets)

Now every time I update the venv or uv tool upgrade, I have to manually readd typing_extensions as it's being removed.

Would it be possible to either only import it conditionally, or declaring it in pyproject.toml so it's not being removed with every update?

Here is the string search for typing_extensions in the repo:
https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Abeetbox%2Fbeets%20typing_extensions&type=code

Problem

Running this command in verbose (-vv) mode:

$ beet

Led to this problem:

...
** error loading plugin edit:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/minusf/src/tmp/beetspip/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/beets/plugins.py", line 268, in load_plugins
    namespace = __import__(modname, None, None)
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/minusf/src/tmp/beetspip/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/beetsplug/edit.py", line 27, in <module>
    from beets.importer import action
  File "/Users/minusf/src/tmp/beetspip/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/beets/importer.py", line 37, in <module>
    from beets.util import (
  File "/Users/minusf/src/tmp/beetspip/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/beets/util/pipeline.py", line 41, in <module>
    from typing_extensions import TypeVar, TypeVarTuple, Unpack
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'typing_extensions'

Setup

• OS: macos
• Python version: 3.12.9
• beets version: 2.2.0 (https://github.com/beetbox/beets.git)
• Turning off plugins mode problem go away (yes/no): yes

My configuration (output of beet config) is:

(paste here)

[wisp3rwind]

That's a regression due to #5611

[semohr]

Sorry about that, did not know typing_extensions was a optional requirement for python>3.10. The fix should be relative easy, i.e.

if sys.version_info >= (3, 11):
    from typing import TypeVarTuple, Unpack
else:
    from typing_extensions import TypeVar, TypeVarTuple, Unpack

Interesting that this was not catched by a test.

[minusf]

I agree that the fix is easy, it just needs to be in all files and preferably checking for the same python version 🙂

[semohr]

Checking for the same Python version isn't desirable here, since the typing module introduces different types across Python versions. Enforcing a single version check could prevent compatibility with newer or older features.

[wisp3rwind]

I'm wondering, however, why this didn't show up in CI tests. Maybe, we pull in typing_extensions anyway via some other (plugin, optional) dependency in CI, but when no plugin dependencies are installed, it is missing?

Would it be sensible to add an extra set of tests without any plugin dependencies installed?

[semohr]

It is used in the sphinx pydata theme extension. Which we install with the docs extra before running tests.
https://github.com/pydata/pydata-sphinx-theme/blob/fc1ce62aa1d38fb3dc7e9cee2f191909d1196971/pyproject.toml#L31

Beautifulsoup4 also has the typing_extensions as requirement which is installed with the lyrics extra.

We would somehow need to run all tests without any extras if we want to prevent these issues in the future.

[wisp3rwind]

We would somehow need to run all tests without any extras if we want to prevent these issues in the future.

Yeah. That would be easy enough in principle. However, I suppose that this should be done for different Python versions, so it might increase CI runtime quite a bit. Maybe someone else (who's been more active than me and has a better overview of the current state of CI) can chime in with their opinion on whether doing so would be worth it?

[semohr]

Can't we just deselect all tests that run in the vanilla environment when we run with extras? This way we would not increase runtime at all. Might take some work to identify these tests but might yield some profits 🤷‍♂