deprecate the nis module

[floppym]

BPO	32007
Nosy	@tiran, @benjaminp, @mcepl, @floppym, @JelleZijlstra, @stratakis, @iritkatriel

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

Show more details

GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2022-03-13.19:01:35.147>
created_at = <Date 2017-11-11.17:06:22.963>
labels = ['type-feature', 'build', '3.11']
title = 'deprecate the nis module'
updated_at = <Date 2022-03-13.19:01:35.146>
user = 'https://github.com/floppym'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2022-03-13.19:01:35.146>
actor = 'iritkatriel'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2022-03-13.19:01:35.147>
closer = 'iritkatriel'
components = ['Build']
creation = <Date 2017-11-11.17:06:22.963>
creator = 'floppymaster'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 32007
keywords = []
message_count = 7.0
messages = ['306090', '306138', '309699', '321074', '321173', '411342', '415078']
nosy_count = 7.0
nosy_names = ['christian.heimes', 'benjamin.peterson', 'mcepl', 'floppymaster', 'JelleZijlstra', 'cstratak', 'iritkatriel']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'duplicate'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue32007'
versions = ['Python 3.11']

[floppym]

The nis extension module fails to build against glibc-2.26 with the "obsolete-rpc" option disabled.

Downstream bug report: https://bugs.gentoo.org/631488

glibc-2.26 release notes: https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2017-08/msg00010.html

The nis module is normally skipped since rpcsvc/yp_prot.h will not exist. However, if the external "libnsl" package is installed, compilation is attempted and fails as given below.

building 'nis' extension
x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-gcc -pthread -fPIC -Wno-unused-result -Wsign-compare -DNDEBUG -march=native -O2 -pipe -g -fwrapv -std=c99 -Wextra -Wno-unused-result -Wno-unused-parameter -Wno-missing-field-initializers -I./Include -I. -I/var/tmp/portage/dev-lang/python-3.6.3/work/Python-3.6.3/Include -I/var/tmp/portage/dev-lang/python-3.6.3/work/Python-3.6.3 -c /var/tmp/portage/dev-lang/python-3.6.3/work/Python-3.6.3/Modules/nismodule.c -o build/temp.linux-x86_64-3.6/var/tmp/portage/dev-lang/python-3.6.3/work/Python-3.6.3/Modules/nismodule.o
/var/tmp/portage/dev-lang/python-3.6.3/work/Python-3.6.3/Modules/nismodule.c:17:21: fatal error: rpc/rpc.h: No such file or directory
 #include <rpc/rpc.h>
                     ^
compilation terminated.

To summarize:

glibc no longer provides rpc/rpc.h or rpcsvc/yp_prot.h. One must install a couple of external libraries to provide the same functionality.

The missing rpcsvc/yp_prot.h file can be resolved by installing the "libnsl" package, which installs the header where setup.py expects to find it.

The missing rpc/rpc.h file may be provided by the "libtirpc" package, but this installs the file under /usr/include/tirpc, which must be added to the include path (-I/usr/include/tirpc).

Ideally, pkg-config would be used to find both libnsl and libtirpc.

[benjaminp]

Rather than investing any effort in nis, we should probably just deprecate and eventually remove it.

(If glibc is actually getting rid of something, you know must be very very deprecated.)

[tiran]

bpo-32521 is a duplicate of this issue. I didn't notice this issue when I created a fix.

• I agree with Benjamin, let's deprecate the NIS module. NIS/YP functionality has been replaced by NSS a long time ago.
• We have no infrastructure to use pkg-config from distutils yet, which is a shame.

[mcepl]

It seems to be even more weird. Even with installed libnsl-devel (libnsl-devel-1.2.0-2.5.x86_64 on openSUSE/Tumbleweed) I get this in config.log:

checking for t_open in -lnsl... no

and truly, when grepping for t_open in /usr/include/rpc* I get nothing.

[mcepl]

• I agree with Benjamin, let's deprecate the NIS module. NIS/YP functionality has been replaced by NSS a long time ago.

Agree. a) who will separate its functionality into separate module for PyPI, b) who start a thread on python-devel?

[JelleZijlstra]

PEP-549 lists nis among modules to be removed: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0594/#nis

For what it's worth, when I built 3.11 from source on Ubuntu 16.04 I managed to build the nis extension, without installing any special libraries first.

[iritkatriel]

is deprecated as per PEP-594, so there is no need for a separate issue for it.