RFE: move from distutils to setuptools (& setup.py build_sphinx)

[kloczek]

[tkloczko@barrel ipython-7.24.1]$ grep distutils setup.py
# BEFORE importing distutils, remove MANIFEST. distutils doesn't properly
from distutils.core import setup
# custom distutils commands
from distutils.command.sdist import sdist

Looks like ipython is still using distutils and by this it does not support setup.py build_sphinx:

+ /usr/bin/python3 setup.py build_sphinx -b man --build-dir build/sphinx
/usr/lib64/python3.8/distutils/dist.py:274: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'project_urls'
  warnings.warn(msg)
usage: setup.py [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
   or: setup.py --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
   or: setup.py --help-commands
   or: setup.py cmd --help

error: invalid command 'build_sphinx'

It would be good to move to setuptools.

[Carreau]

Thanks, we are aware, and we also likely want to move to declarative setup in a pyproject.toml for example, as well as get rid of our dependency on nose.

[tirkarthi]

distutils is also deprecated from Python 3.10 : https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0632/

[kloczek]

distutils is also deprecated from Python 3.10 : https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0632/

Good point. I just added note in my ticket against flit to not generate settup.py with import distutils becasue oof that PEP.

[pradyunsg]

My two cents: it would be a good idea to move to flit, since IPython is a pure-Python project and doesn't need most of the additional capabilities afforded by setuptools.

[bollwyvl]

The one exception being the man pages, delivered via data_files. This is the one case flit has considered supporting but it SURE WOULD BE NICE if it just supported the actual feature, with whatever caveats, that still made it work for the rest of the jupyter stack...

[Carreau]

Yes, +1 to have purely declarative setup. I ❤️ flit as well.

[kloczek]

flit at the moment is nothing more than just archiver which can generate .whl file with necessary checksums inside.
pypa/flit#429

flit cannot handle actual build of the module when it is necessary to build DSO or cannot handle building documentation like setuptools<>sphinx integration does https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/advanced/setuptools.html
Only from that point of view I would recommend to stick with pure pep515 (settup.cfg/project.toml + stub setrtup.py consisting from 'from setuptools import setup; setup()') but with setuptools backend.
flit additionally autogenerates setup.py with imported distutils which is already on the road to be deprecated https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0632/

[MrMino]

AFAICT distutils is no longer used. That said, integration with sphinx is still not there, so I'm leaving this issue open for that.

[kloczek]

I no longer see that distutils is used in latest 8.3.0 .
I think that this ticket can be closed.

Thx.

[Carreau]

thanks.