Installing a package that depends on setuptools fails intermittently: Backend 'setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__' is not available.

[MycroftKang]

• Poetry version: 1.4.0
• Python version: 3.10.9
• OS version and name: Microsoft Windows Server 2022 10.0.20348 Datacenter (windows-2022 GitHub runner)

• I am on the latest stable Poetry version, installed using a recommended method.
• I have searched the issues of this repo and believe that this is not a duplicate.
• I have consulted the FAQ and blog for any relevant entries or release notes.
• If an exception occurs when executing a command, I executed it again in debug mode (-vvv option) and have included the output below.

Issue

Installing a package that depends on setuptools fails intermittently. This bug does not occur in poetry 1.3 and is found in poetry 1.4.

ChefBuildError

  Backend 'setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__' is not available.

  at C:\Program Files (x86)\pipx\venvs\poetry\lib\site-packages\poetry\installation\chef.py:152 in _prepare
      148| 
      149|                 error = ChefBuildError("\n\n".join(message_parts))
      150| 
      151|             if error is not None:
    > 152|                 raise error from None
      153| 
      154|             return path
      155| 
      156|     def _prepare_sdist(self, archive: Path, destination: Path | None = None) -> Path:

Note: This error originates from the build backend, and is likely not a problem with poetry but with docopt (0.6.2) not supporting PEP 517 builds. You can verify this by running 'pip wheel --use-pep517 "docopt (==0.6.2)"'.

View full logs

    $ poetry install
    Installing dependencies from lock file
Package operations: 150 installs, 2 updates, 0 removals

    Installing certifi (2022.12.7)
    Installing charset-normalizer (2.0.12)
    Installing idna (3.4)
    Installing pyasn1 (0.4.8)
    Installing urllib3 (1.26.14)
    Installing cachetools (5.3.0)
    Installing oauthlib (3.2.2)
    Installing pyasn1-modules (0.2.8)
    Installing requests (2.28.2)
    Installing six (1.16.0)
    Installing rsa (4.9)
    Installing catalogue (2.0.8)
    Installing colorama (0.4.6)
    Installing google-auth (2.16.0)
    Installing markupsafe (2.1.2)
    Installing requests-oauthlib (1.3.1)
    Installing multidict (5.2.0)
    Installing typing-extensions (4.4.0)
    Installing tzdata (2022.7)
    Installing absl-py (1.3.0)
    Installing click (8.1.3)
    Installing cymem (2.0.7)
    Installing frozenlist (1.3.3)
    Installing grpcio (1.51.1)
    Installing google-auth-oauthlib (0.4.6)
    Installing locket (1.0.0)
    Installing markdown (3.4.1)
    Installing murmurhash (1.0.9)
    Installing numpy (1.23.5)
    Installing pamqp (3.2.1)
    Installing protobuf (3.19.6)
    Installing pydantic (1.10.4)
    Installing pyparsing (3.0.9)
    Installing pyreadline3 (3.4.1)
    Installing pytz-deprecation-shim (0.1.0.post0)
    Installing ruamel-yaml-clib (0.2.7)
    Updating setuptools (65.3.0 -> 66.1.1)
    Installing srsly (2.4.5)
    Installing tensorboard-data-server (0.6.1)
    Installing tensorboard-plugin-wit (1.8.1)
    Installing termcolor (2.2.0)
    Installing toolz (0.12.0)
    Installing werkzeug (2.2.2)
    Updating wheel (0.37.1 -> 0.38.4)
    Installing yarl (1.8.2)
    Installing aiormq (6.6.4)
    Installing aiosignal (1.3.1)
    Installing astunparse (1.6.3)
    Installing async-timeout (4.0.2)
    Installing attrs (22.1.0)
    Installing blis (0.7.9)
    Installing cloudpickle (2.2.1)
    Installing confection (0.0.4)
    Installing docopt (0.6.2)
    Installing fire (0.5.0)
    Installing flatbuffers (23.1.21)
    Installing fsspec (2023.1.0)
    Installing gast (0.5.3)
    Installing google-pasta (0.2.0)
    Installing greenlet (2.0.1)
    Installing h5py (3.8.0)
    Installing humanfriendly (10.0)
    Installing joblib (1.2.0)
    Installing keras (2.8.0)
    Installing keras-preprocessing (1.1.2)
    Installing libclang (15.0.6.1)
    Installing msgpack (1.0.4)
    Installing opt-einsum (3.3.0)
    Installing packaging (20.9)
    Installing partd (1.3.0)
    Installing preshed (3.0.8)
    Installing pyrsistent (0.19.3)
    Installing python-crfsuite (0.9.9)
    Installing python-dateutil (2.8.2)
    Installing pytz (2022.1)
    Installing pyyaml (6.0)
    Installing ruamel-yaml (0.17.21)
    Installing scipy (1.8.1)
    Installing smart-open (6.3.0)
    Installing tabulate (0.9.0)
    Installing tensorboard (2.8.0)
    Installing tensorflow-estimator (2.8.0)
    Installing tensorflow-io-gcs-filesystem (0.30.0)
    Installing threadpoolctl (3.1.0)
    Installing tqdm (4.64.1)
    Installing typeguard (2.13.3)
    Installing typer (0.7.0)
    Installing tzlocal (4.2)
    Installing wasabi (0.10.1)
    Installing wrapt (1.14.1)

  ChefBuildError

  Backend 'setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__' is not available.

  at C:\Program Files (x86)\pipx\venvs\poetry\lib\site-packages\poetry\installation\chef.py:152 in _prepare
      148| 
      149|                 error = ChefBuildError("\n\n".join(message_parts))
      150| 
      151|             if error is not None:
    > 152|                 raise error from None
      153| 
      154|             return path
      155| 
      156|     def _prepare_sdist(self, archive: Path, destination: Path | None = None) -> Path:

Note: This error originates from the build backend, and is likely not a problem with poetry but with docopt (0.6.2) not supporting PEP 517 builds. You can verify this by running 'pip wheel --use-pep517 "docopt (==0.6.2)"'.

Interim Solutions

There are several workarounds below that mitigate this issue.

• Downgrade poetry version to 1.3

pipx install "poetry>=1.3.0,<1.4.0"

• Try poetry install several times

poetry install -vvv --no-root || poetry install -vvv --no-root || poetry install -vvv --no-root...

[dimbleby]

you didn't provide any means to reproduce. installing docopt works fine for me.

If you can reproduce then this probably wants reporting to https://github.com/pypa/build/, that's what poetry 1.4.0's "modern installer" uses.

[MycroftKang]

@dimbleby It doesn't seem to be a problem specific to the docopt package. Installing timeout-decorator package fails in the following case:

• https://github.com/requests-cache/requests-cache/actions/runs/4309110823/jobs/7517583482

Another case of this bug was reported in: requests-cache/requests-cache#797

[MycroftKang]

From what I've seen so far, this bug doesn't occur when using Poetry 1.3.2.

[dimbleby]

sure, that's all consistent with it being a problem only with the "modern installer" in poetry 1.4.0: and if so then, as above, it likely wants reporting to https://github.com/pypa/build/

[Samreay]

For another case of this (if it helps reproduction), our pyproject.toml includes a dependency which installs pdpyras.

When running a poetry install, we receive:

ChefBuildError
  Backend 'setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__' is not available.
  at /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/poetry/installation/chef.py:152 in _prepare
      148│ 
      149│                 error = ChefBuildError("\n\n".join(message_parts))
      150│ 
      151│             if error is not None:
    → 152│                 raise error from None
      153│ 
      154│             return path
      155│ 
      156│     def _prepare_sdist(self, archive: Path, destination: Path | None = None) -> Path:
Note: This error originates from the build backend, and is likely not a problem with poetry but with pdpyras (4.5.2) not supporting PEP 517 builds. You can verify this by running 'pip wheel --use-pep517 "pdpyras (==4.5.2) ; python_version >= "3.5""'.

And I can confirm that if I run the command suggested, pdpyras installs perfectly fine.

[jrversteegh]

confirm for pluginbase-1.0.1. Works with poetry < 1.4.0, but not with poetry 1.4.0. Same error message.

[radoering]

I tried to reproduce this issue by putting all mentioned packages into one pyproject.toml:

docopt = "0.6.2"
pdpyras = "4.5.2"
timeout-decorator = "0.5.0"
pytest-clarity = "1.0.1"
pluginbase = "1.0.1"

While I have not been able to reproduce the error message mentioned in this issue, I encountered a different issue: pypa/virtualenv#2516

I don't expect it to be related to this issue, but since a new virtualenv version (20.21.0) with a fix was released yesterday, you may want to try to update virtualenv in your poetry installation and confirm that this issue is still present.

Note: The new virtualenv version cannot be used if poetry is installed with Python 3.9 on Windows, see

poetry/pyproject.toml

Lines 80 to 84 in 0e72a55

	virtualenv = [
	{ version = "^20.4.3,!=20.4.5,!=20.4.6" },
	# see https://github.com/python-poetry/poetry/pull/6950 for details
	{ version = "<20.16.6", markers = "sys_platform == 'win32' and python_version == '3.9'" },
	]

[alexhermida]

Same behaviour here with scikit-learn, with Poetry 1.3.2 works fine.

[ElSaico]

For those experiencing this issue: update your lock files. It might've been luck (intermittent failure and all...), but here it started to behave again.[1]
That would explain the inability to reproduce this bug as well.

[1] ...and then immediately stumble into #7572, as I'm using Hypercorn, but that one is better understood and can be worked around without downgrading.

[BEEugene]

You can also try update pip, in my case it resolved the issue

[MusicScience37]

For some libraries, change of the version of Python resolved errors.

[aspcompiler]

We encounter this sporadically with Poetry 1.4.1 running in Windows container as well. The error message is like:

 • Installing wrapt (1.14.1)
  ChefBuildError
  Backend 'setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__' is not available.
  at ~\AppData\Roaming\pypoetry\venv\lib\site-packages\poetry\installation\chef.py:152 in _prepare
      148│ 
      149│                 error = ChefBuildError("\n\n".join(message_parts))
      150│ 
      151│             if error is not None:
    → 152│                 raise error from None
      153│ 
      154│             return path
      155│ 
      156│     def _prepare_sdist(self, archive: Path, destination: Path | None = None) -> Path:
Note: This error originates from the build backend, and is likely not a problem with poetry but with atomicwrites (1.4.1) not supporting PEP 517 builds. You can verify this by running 'pip wheel --use-pep517 "atomicwrites (==1.4.1)"'.

[alexjc]

This happens quite often (not quite reliably) with Python 3.9 on windows, Poetry 1.4.1. Installing wcwidth as a dependency...

[gpongelli]

happened today with a package that has "bs4" as its dependency, when running windows with python 3.8 and 3.9, using poetry 1.4.1 due to recent poetry-core fix.

    ChefBuildError
  
    Backend 'setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__' is not available.
  
    at ~\AppData\Local\Temp\cibw-run-fwneq3zj\cp38-win_amd64\venv-test\lib\site-packages\poetry\installation\chef.py:152 in _prepare
        148│ 
        149│                 error = ChefBuildError("\n\n".join(message_parts))
        150│ 
        151│             if error is not None:
      → 152│                 raise error from None
        153│ 
        154│             return path
        155│ 
        156│     def _prepare_sdist(self, archive: Path, destination: Path | None = None) -> Path:
  
  Note: This error originates from the build backend, and is likely not a problem with poetry but with bs4 (0.0.1) not supporting PEP 517 builds. You can verify this by running 'pip wheel --use-pep517 "bs4 (==0.0.1)"'.

[Real-Gecko]

MacOS Catalina, Python 3.10.11, Poetry 1.4.1

  • Installing promise (2.3): Failed

  ChefBuildError

  Backend 'setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__' is not available.

[radoering]

To make sure this is not an issue that is fixed in the latest virtualenv version, please report the version of virtualenv in poetry's own environment in addition to the operating system and the Python version if you experience this issue!

I am not aware of any universally applicable way to determine the version. If installed poetry via pipx, it should be as easy as running:

pipx runpip poetry show virtualenv

Otherwise, you probably have to search for poetry's environment manually. If you think, you are in the correct environment, you can run the following snippet:

try:
    import poetry
except:
    print("I am not in the poetry environment and this is not the right answer")

import virtualenv
print(virtualenv.__version__)

[thiagobenine]

For those experiencing this issue: update your lock files. It might've been luck (intermittent failure and all...), but here it started to behave again.[1] That would explain the inability to reproduce this bug as well.

[1] ...and then immediately stumble into #7572, as I'm using Hypercorn, but that one is better understood and can be worked around without downgrading.

Updating the lock files solved for me, thanks @gpongelli!

[ancalita]

We've also noticed this in the CI on Windows jobs across python 3.8, 3.9, 3.10 after upgrading poetry to 1.4.2, updating lock file then running the CI (which includes running poetry install):

ChefBuildError

  Backend 'setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__' is not available.

  at ~\AppData\Roaming\pypoetry\venv\lib\site-packages\poetry\installation\chef.py:152 in _prepare
      148| 
      149|                 error = ChefBuildError("\n\n".join(message_parts))
      150| 
      151|             if error is not None:
    > 152|                 raise error from None
      153| 
      154|             return path
      155| 
      156|     def _prepare_sdist(self, archive: Path, destination: Path | None = None) -> Path:

Note: This error originates from the build backend, and is likely not a problem with poetry but with fire (0.5.0) not supporting PEP 517 builds. You can verify this by running 'pip wheel --use-pep517 "fire (==0.5.0)"'.

  � Installing sanic-cors (2.0.1)
  � Installing scipy (1.8.1)
  � Installing tabulate (0.9.0)
  � Installing tensorboard (2.11.2)
  � Installing tensorflow-estimator (2.11.0)

  ChefBuildError

  Backend 'setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__' is not available.

  at ~\AppData\Roaming\pypoetry\venv\lib\site-packages\poetry\installation\chef.py:152 in _prepare
      148| 
      149|                 error = ChefBuildError("\n\n".join(message_parts))
      150| 
      151|             if error is not None:
    > 152|                 raise error from None
      153| 
      154|             return path
      155| 
      156|     def _prepare_sdist(self, archive: Path, destination: Path | None = None) -> Path:

Note: This error originates from the build backend, and is likely not a problem with poetry but with future (0.18.3) not supporting PEP 517 builds. You can verify this by running 'pip wheel --use-pep517 "future (==0.18.3)"'.

Confirming the lock file was updated after poetry upgrade with poetry lock --no-update and the issue occurs despite this.

[radoering]

Thanks to @robbotorigami (#7611 (comment)) I was able to reproduce the issue and provide a fix in #8517. Feel free to try the PR.

[MattOates]

@radoering I tied the PR above locally and it doesn't resolve the issue for me locally. But neither do any of the proposed work arounds mentioned in this thread to date. I also have the issue irregardless of poetry and python version combo. So I suspect there is some other environment things at play too. Im on a very fresh macOS setup.

[robbotorigami]

I've tested #8517 in the CI workflows where I was seeing issues, and I no longer see any failures. The fix for the concurrency issue seems sensible and should resolve any issues arising from concurrent downloads. Based on the comments in this thread, it seems likely that this was the issue that most (but not all) of the users encountering this error were running into. I suspect that for those having success with the suggested workarounds, this PR will solve the issue.

[inducer]

Sorry to (possibly?) be the bearer of bad news here: This build appears to fail (on Windows) with a very similar symptom to what is described here, despite using poetry 1.7.0, which contains #8517. 🤔

  � Installing django-codemirror-widget (0.5.0)

  ChefBuildError

  Backend 'setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__' is not available.
  
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "C:\Users\runneradmin\.local\venv\Lib\site-packages\pyproject_hooks\_in_process\_in_process.py", line 77, in _build_backend
      obj = import_module(mod_path)
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    File "C:\hostedtoolcache\windows\Python\3.12.0\x64\Lib\importlib\__init__.py", line 90, in import_module
      return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1381, in _gcd_import
    File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1354, in _find_and_load
    File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1304, in _find_and_load_unlocked
    File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 488, in _call_with_frames_removed
    File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1381, in _gcd_import
    File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1354, in _find_and_load
    File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1325, in _find_and_load_unlocked
    File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 929, in _load_unlocked
    File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 994, in exec_module
    File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 488, in _call_with_frames_removed
    File "C:\Users\RUNNER~1\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp5cl80_pe\.venv\Lib\site-packages\setuptools\__init__.py", line 8, in <module>
      import distutils.core
  ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils'
  

  at ~\.local\venv\Lib\site-packages\poetry\installation\chef.py:166 in _prepare
      162| 
      163|                 error = ChefBuildError("\n\n".join(message_parts))
      164| 
      165|             if error is not None:
    > 166|                 raise error from None
      167| 
      168|             return path
      169| 
      170|     def _prepare_sdist(self, archive: Path, destination: Path | None = None) -> Path:

Note: This error originates from the build backend, and is likely not a problem with poetry but with django-codemirror-widget (0.5.0) not supporting PEP 517 builds. You can verify this by running 'pip wheel --no-cache-dir --use-pep517 "django-codemirror-widget (==0.5.0)"'.

Notably, the suggested command succeeds:

pip wheel --no-cache-dir --use-pep517 "django-codemirror-widget (==0.5.0)"                                                                                               andreas@arc 15:25
/home/andreas/src/env-3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pip/_internal/metadata/importlib/_envs.py:111: DeprecationWarning: pkg_resources is deprecated as an API. See https://setuptools.pypa.io/en/latest/pkg_resources.html
  from pip._vendor.pkg_resources import find_distributions
Collecting django-codemirror-widget==0.5.0
  Downloading django-codemirror-widget-0.5.0.tar.gz (6.6 kB)
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
  Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done
Building wheels for collected packages: django-codemirror-widget
  Building wheel for django-codemirror-widget (pyproject.toml) ... done
  Created wheel for django-codemirror-widget: filename=django_codemirror_widget-0.5.0-py3-none-any.whl size=7918 sha256=994b804c1d4228457b59ce78a09d2be116f56aeba47a5c968504343582afb26c
  Stored in directory: /tmp/pip-ephem-wheel-cache-1cu5q9ol/wheels/35/bd/a5/48fb66e57f3161108f210d9dbcb36732bf7afcd6e63a4f38da
/home/andreas/src/env-3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pip/_internal/metadata/importlib/_dists.py:73: DeprecationWarning: Unimplemented abstract methods {'locate_file'}
  return cls(files, info_location)
Successfully built django-codemirror-widget

[scottshambaugh]

I am also continuing to see the same build failure here on Windows, Ubuntu, and MacOSX despite using poetry 1.7.0 which contained the supposed fix, see this workflow: https://github.com/scottshambaugh/monaco/actions/runs/6763933260/job/18381632398

[timwie]

It's a different error, the key difference being ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils'. That's because distutils is removed in Python 3.12. @scottshambaugh this is fixed in numpy 1.26.

[scottshambaugh]

Thank you @timwie! That did indeed resolve my error.

[dimbleby]

that is not even close to being the same error: and by reproducing it with pip you have anyway proved that it is not a poetry problem.

[PedroH183]

Same issue here, the Interim Solutions works for me.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. Please open a new issue for related bugs.