ImportError: cannot import name 'packaging' from 'pkg_resources' with setuptools 70 about buildout

[icemac]

@specialunderwear Thank you for this bugreport. For now please pin setuptools to a version smaller than 70 until this issue is fixed.

[perrinjerome]

Note that the whole pkg_resources API (that buildout uses) is deprecated , there's a warning in
https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/blob/52d732434377dac92df9b50a93eb78fe743b9e24/pkg_resources/__init__.py#L104-L109 referencing https://setuptools.pypa.io/en/latest/pkg_resources.html , so it's possible that more usages becomes broken in the future.

[mauritsvanrees]

I have a PR to fix this: #649

But the tests fail in the same way as they were failing earlier on master. I tried fixing it, but failed, so help would be appreciated.

[npilon]

I think that properly fixing this requires making some headway on the PEP 420 implicit namespace packages issue; I've started to make some headway on that here: https://github.com/npilon/buildout/tree/setuptools-70-prep

But:

• I've got a lot of slightly different doctest output to adjust for, including a couple of warnings I'd like to get rid of.
• The tests that create a new distribution need adjustment.
• I need zc.recipe.testrunner, zc.zdaemonrecipe, zc.recipe.deployment built using implicit namespace packages - I worked around this for some tests by creating a zc.recipe.testrunner_ local just like zc.recipe.egg_ but I don't think anyone will be thrilled by that solution.

[mauritsvanrees]

@npilon Your commit 0e06073 to change easy_install.py to no longer call setup.py develop sounds useful.

But I don't think implicit namespaces have anything to do with this.

[npilon]

My thinking was to try to deal with them all at the same time because the namespace packages style uses the same deprecated pkg_resources api, but I’m certainly game to try to bite off smaller chunks.

Why don’t I see if I can get the tests passing with 70.0 and <70.0 using the pip-ified version, then we can discuss further changes?

[npilon]

Okay I've got a few more branches on the go now:

• master...npilon:buildout:no-more-setup-develop - this just does the setup.py develop to pip install -e swap.
• master...npilon:buildout:pkg-resources-packaging-to-packaging - this is that plus fixes for setuptools 70

Unfortunately this results in a lot of new output from setuptools, and trying to convince it to quiet down hits some frustrating-to-handle deprecations and feature removals, as the maintainer of zstandard details in this blog post: https://gregoryszorc.com/blog/2023/10/30/my-user-experience-porting-off-setup.py/

• master...npilon:buildout:quiet-setuptools - that's the best I could do for quieting those output lines down, but even there there's some tests that are still producing that extra output and I haven't had much luck tracking down how or why. Even then it relies on a deprecated pip install option, and using the new option forces setuptools into PEP-517 mode, which means it no longer produces .egg-link files.