distutils.util.grok_environment_error loses the error message

[mgedmin]

BPO	19333
Nosy	@mgedmin, @tarekziade, @merwok, @takluyver
Superseder	bpo-4931: distutils does not show any error msg when can't build C module extensions due to a missing C compiler

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = 'https://github.com/merwok'
closed_at = <Date 2014-03-07.22:52:27.029>
created_at = <Date 2013-10-21.14:05:17.012>
labels = ['type-bug', 'library']
title = 'distutils.util.grok_environment_error loses the error message'
updated_at = <Date 2014-03-07.22:52:27.028>
user = 'https://github.com/mgedmin'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2014-03-07.22:52:27.028>
actor = 'eric.araujo'
assignee = 'eric.araujo'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2014-03-07.22:52:27.029>
closer = 'eric.araujo'
components = ['Distutils']
creation = <Date 2013-10-21.14:05:17.012>
creator = 'mgedmin'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 19333
keywords = []
message_count = 2.0
messages = ['200785', '212908']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['mgedmin', 'tarek', 'eric.araujo', 'takluyver']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'duplicate'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = '4931'
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue19333'
versions = ['Python 2.7', 'Python 3.3']

[mgedmin]

Steps to reproduce:

$ python -c 'from distutils.util import grok_environment_error as e; print(e(IOError("message")))'

What I expect to see:
error: message

What I get instead:
error: None

This is a problem because it hides the error message in a real-life use case: trying to use the latest setuptools in an ancient virtualenv (see [1]). TL;DR version:

• sysconfig (in the standard library) raises IOError(msg),
• which is then caught and passed throughdistutils.util.grok_environment_error(),
• which then returns an unfriendly 'error: None'.

[1] https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/issue/89/easy_install-quits-with-error-none-in

[takluyver]

Duplicate of bpo-4931. This function should be entirely unnecessary now.