Building: Migrate away from distutils

[hosiet]

Description of bug

Python 3.12+ has officially purged distutils from the std library. All distutils functionality can be provided by setuptools. Please consider completely remove distutils usage from the repo (most importantly in setup.py).

Steps to reproduce

Build the package with python 3.12

Backtraces or error messages

File "/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/setup.py", line 17, in <module>
     from distutils.command.build import build
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils'
E: pybuild pybuild:391: clean: plugin distutils failed with: exit
code=1: python3.12 setup.py clean

MyPaint version

git HEAD

Operating System(s)

N/A

Desktop Environment (Linux)

N/A

Code of Conduct

• I acknowledge that my conduct contributes to shaping the community.

[hosiet]

Looking at code search from https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Amypaint%2Fmypaint%20distutils&type=code , there are usages in setup.py

mypaint/setup.py

Lines 28 to 29 in f95972f

	from distutils.command.build import build
	from distutils.command.clean import clean

and tests/unported/performance.py

mypaint/tests/unported/performance.py

Line 9 in f95972f

import distutils.spawn

mypaint/tests/unported/performance.py

Line 450 in f95972f

if distutils.spawn.find_executable("gprof2dot.py") \

[AesaraB]

Realistically this will be something I get to in one or two weeks as I'm currently working on refactoring the documentation

[eeickmeyer]

@AesaraB First of all, thank you so much for this work! I know quite a few people that love mypaint and use it with their Wacom tablets on Ubuntu Studio!

Unfortunately, mypaint has officially been removed from Ubuntu Noble Numbat (future 24.04 LTS) in order to accommodate the Python 3.12 transition. I do hate to rush this, but the sooner a fix can be provided, the better. I went to update the seeds and metapackages for Ubuntu Studio just now and, much to my surprise (and alarm!), I found it had been removed.

[AesaraB]

As a temporary holdover, see if the AppImage works

[eeickmeyer]

Unfortunately we can't upload the AppImage to the archive for Debian or Ubuntu; that's just not possible. It must be built from source, so while the AppImage would work for our users, this issue doesn't affect them yet as 24.04 isn't released. We're trying to prevent this from becoming an issue.

[AesaraB]

OH! I apologise, I hadn't realised you were a packager. There are a number of issues to contend with before the next minor release (there have been hundreds of commits since then, plus this project has more or less been abandoned for two years, so some spring cleaning too). I could, for your purposes, create patch files that you can apply to relevant files for the current release.

[eeickmeyer]

Yes! Myself and @hosiet are both packagers, me for Ubuntu, himself for Debian. :) All we need are patches and we're good to go! 😄

[AesaraB]

PEP 632 – Deprecate distutils module

While Python 3.12 will not include the distutils library, setuptools will.

• distutils.command.build.build is grandfathered into setuptools.
  • Setuptools may eventually include its own implementation of custom build steps.
• distutils.command.clean.clean does not have a modern equivalent, as setup.py is depreciated.
  • We'll follow the convention in the current master branch for this.
    

    mypaint/setup.py

    Lines 26 to 29 in f95972f

    	# setuptools must be imported first since they ensure
    	# their distutils implementation will be used.
    	from distutils.command.build import build
    	from distutils.command.clean import clean

This patch modifies two files as the bare minimum I need to get MyPaint built. It:

1. Makes appropriate fixes for the problems listed above.
2. Fixes a depreciated (and removed) call in gettext_setup.py.
3. Does not yet make changes to the unit tests, I'm hoping they'll just throw a warning at you, rather than stop you from building anything.

Patch file below. Apply it to tag v2.0.1, tell me if it works.
distutils.patch.txt

[AesaraB]

FYI, I haven't tested this on Python 3.12 as my development environment doesn't package it in the default repos. I'll set things up properly if setup.py is still broken.

[hosiet]

Thanks for the patch.

@eeickmeyer please note, I cannot make any influence on the Ubuntu side. You may need more communication with Ubuntu internals so that package mypaint won't miss Ubuntu 24.04 release deadline.

[eeickmeyer]

@hosiet As long as the patch is implemented in unstable before the end of this month, it'll automatically sync to Ubuntu. After that, I can manually sync it. Looks like, as far as I can tell, that was already done, so we're just waiting for some Python 3.12 transition items to untangle before it hits the release pocket.

[AesaraB]

Hi, this issue is a subset of #1229, and no longer needs to be open. Can you confirm/deny the patch as working?

[hosiet]

Ignoring the test scripts, I believe the patch works for package building. I think we can close the issue and focus more on #1229 for the next release. Thanks!