[Nix-dev] Python setuptools upgrade and possibly failing builds

[Freddy Rietdijk]

Hi Nixers,

We're upgrading Pythons setuptools to the latest version [1]. In the latest
version setuptools changed behavior with regards to how tests are run, and
this might affect one or more of your packages.

Up till now we had builds passing the test phase even when no tests were
run, often because no test runner was explicitly specified. With the new
version, setuptools will always try to run tests, even when the required
test runner is not present. Therefore, if you haven't specified correctly
how the tests should run the build will fail. And it will fail occasionally
with some very vague errors.

This change has a big impact on nixpkgs, with many Python package builds
now failing that before silently passed the checkPhase. We've fixed a large
set of the failing builds, but definitely not all of them.

So what should you do if you want to fix a package you need? Well, simple,
if you notice that a package you need is not building, you have to fix the
test runner. Generally that is enough.

If however you cannot get it to pass the checkPhase and you want to disable
the tests, then please explain in the code why you disabled the tests.

Tomorrow we'll likely merge this PR. Until this is merged, please don't
make any changes to `python-packages.nix`.

Thanks!

Freddy

[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/12552
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