Text replace on Windows broken

[ilanschnell]

After building numexpr using conda-build (using this recipe https://github.com/ContinuumIO/anaconda-recipes/tree/master/numexpr), a user reported:

[testing] C:\Users\palm\Documents\antony\src\ipython>python -c "import numexpr"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\Users\palm\Miniconda3\envs\testing\lib\site-packages\numexpr\__init__
.py", line 24, in <module>
    from .__config__ import show as show_config, get_info
  File "C:\Users\palm\Miniconda3\envs\testing\lib\site-packages\numexpr\__config
__.py", line 5
    mkl_info={'library_dirs': ['C:\Users\palm\Miniconda3\envs\testing\\Library\\
lib'], 'define_macros': [('SCIPY_MKL_H', None), ('HAVE_CBLAS', None)], 'librarie
s': ['mkl_sequential_dll', 'mkl_core_dll', 'mkl_intel_lp64_dll', 'mkl_intel_thre
ad_dll'], 'include_dirs': ['C:\Users\palm\Miniconda3\envs\testing\\Library\\incl
ude']}
                              ^
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in positio
n 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

Something strange is happening with the text replacement here. The numexpr conda package we are talking about is: http://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/win-64/numexpr-2.6.0-np110py35_0.tar.bz2
It contains info/has_prefix, with:

"C:\\Minonda\\envs\\_build" text "Lib/site-packages/numexpr/__config__.py"

Something regarding the \'s is wrong here. I'm not sure if the bug is in conda-build or conda.
Originally, numexpr has always been built using the internal Anaconda system, which by default would never create info/has_prefix on Windows.

CC @msarahan

[ilanschnell]

Ah, and the reason this wasn't caught using testing is because my prefix is C:\Minonda\envs\..., but
when you install the package into C:\Users (which contains \U) the wrong escaping strikes!

[msarahan]

In the package you linked to, the contents of Lib/site-packages/numexpr/__config__.py seem to be escaped properly. I think this bug might lie in conda's manipulation of that path when installing the package.

However, I want to know more about why you say you'd never create has_prefix on Windows - how would you fix the paths in these files? What would make has_prefix unnecessary?

[msarahan]

CC @kalefranz - should we move this one to conda?

[ilanschnell]

On Windows, info/has_prefix files have never been necessary as far as Anaconda is concerned.
It would be nice to have a no_has_prefix option in meta.yaml, then I could fix the problem by adding:

build:
  no_has_prefix: True              [win]

I will inspect other new Windows packages which have been created using conda recipes, to see if they contain info/has_prefix, and if that might cause problems.

[msarahan]

OK, but how does that __config__.py get handled with your build system? It seems to have important paths in it that need to be reconfigured on end users' systems. Is that true, or am I missing something?

[ilanschnell]

__config__.py didn't get handled in the Anaconda build system. I'm not sure what the __config__.py file is used for, but it never caused any problems not having it updated upon install.

[github-actions]

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