Missing pkg_resources on macOS

[bgvoisin]

Setup: M1 Apple Silicon Mac, macOS Tahoe 26.1, no other Python installed than the one coming with Xcode 26.1.

Upon startup of the new October 2025 release, the splash screen appears together with a warning "Core python package 'pkg_resources' not found: Cannot discover plugins". After a couple of seconds the splash screen vanishes, only the warning window remains and clicking anywhere just produces beeps. The only way out is Command-Option-Escape to force-quit the app.

To be sure, I checked with the January 2023 release: no warning, the Open Font dialog appears and everything works OK.

I see the same warning appeared years ago #4761. Comparing the two FontForge versions:

• January 2023

% ls -1 FontForge.app/Contents/Resources/opt/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages
_distutils_hack
distutils-precedence.pth
fontforge.so
libsvn
pip
pip-22.2.2.dist-info
pkg_resources
psMat.so
setuptools
setuptools-65.4.1.dist-info
svn
wheel
wheel-0.37.1.dist-info

• October 2025

% ls -1 FontForge.app/Contents/Resources/opt/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages 
fontforge.so
pip
pip-25.2.dist-info
psMat.so
wheel
wheel-0.45.1.dist-info

So a few things are missing, including setuptools and pkg_resources which seem to be involved according to that previous issue. I cannot say more, as I don't really know Python.

[iorsh]

Work is in progress on it in #5643

[vesper8]

For anyone stuck on this, I was able to work around the problem by first running this:

python3 -m pip install --target /Applications/FontForge.app/Contents/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.13/lib/python3.13/site-packages setuptools

Afterwards I was able to use it like this

/Applications/FontForge.app/Contents/Resources/opt/local/bin/fontforge -lang=py -script batch_import_svg.py