Switch to PEP517 build process & `pyproject.toml`

[Flamefire]

When installing EasyBuild with pip the following deprecation warning is shown:

DEPRECATION: Building 'easybuild-framework' using the legacy setup.py bdist_wheel mechanism, which will be removed in a future version. pip 25.3 will enforce this behaviour change. A possible replacement is to use the standardized build interface by setting the --use-pep517 option, (possibly combined with --no-build-isolation), or adding a pyproject.toml file to the source tree of 'easybuild-framework'. Discussion can be found at pypa/pip#6334

With pip 25.3 on Python 3.14 there is no warning or error, although the new build process seems to be used:

jreuter@Linux ~ pip --version
pip 25.3 from /usr/lib/python3.14/site-packages/pip (python 3.14)
jreuter@Linux ~ update-easybuild.sh
Collecting https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/archive/develop.tar.gz
Using cached https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/archive/develop.tar.gz (7.3 MB)
Installing build dependencies ... done
Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done
Building wheels for collected packages: easybuild-easyconfigs
Building wheel for easybuild-easyconfigs (pyproject.toml) ... done
Created wheel for easybuild-easyconfigs: filename=easybuild_easyconfigs-5.2.1.dev0-py3-none-any.whl size=18205668 sha256=c7085de0e06e8918e551a60942840e9f2164463315ff9bb5e83e0245730e93a6
Stored in directory: /tmp/pip-ephem-wheel-cache-fyq07w5v/wheels/6d/03/51/5dcd5171e39e242d65d07f2b8afb05bc84b5318c07cabd38a5
Successfully built easybuild-easyconfigs
Installing collected packages: easybuild-easyconfigs
Attempting uninstall: easybuild-easyconfigs
Found existing installation: easybuild-easyconfigs 5.2.1.dev0
Uninstalling easybuild-easyconfigs-5.2.1.dev0:
Successfully uninstalled easybuild-easyconfigs-5.2.1.dev0
Successfully installed easybuild-easyconfigs-5.2.1.dev0

PEP 517 is especially about build isolation, i.e. (automatically) creating a virtualenv where build dependencies are installed to before building the package.

This might also be useful for #5065 if it turns out that our standard use of setuptools (in there) is (unexpectedly) incompatible with some specific setuptools version as we can use pyproject.toml setup-requires to specify what we want or don't want.

[boegel]

EasyBuild doesn't "force" to use of bdist_wheel in any way, but maybe pip used to rely on it if there only was a setup.py and no pyproject.toml?

I'm not very keen on making changes to the packaging aspect of the easybuild-* packages, especially since we want to retain (deprecated) support for pretty old environments, like default Python (v3.6) and pip (v??) in RHEL8, for example...

If there's no real problem using latest pip, do we actually need to act (already)?

[Flamefire]

From what I can tell the recent pip (25.1+) does use the PEP517 build even without a pyproject.toml, hence its mentioning in the output

We can avoid the warning in Pip 25.1 & 25.2 by adding that file.

From pypa/pip#6334

Most projects which omit pyproject.toml will continue to build without problems after this change, but it's possible some projects will fail to build when using the standardised fallback mechanism (for example, due to undeclared build dependencies).

Doesn't look like it affects us.
If setuptools is not installed we can use pyproject.toml to install it (to that temporary env) so it possibly works in more environments than before.

PEP517 seems to be supported since pip 19 (first with support of --[no-]use-pep517 option). If we can rely that is available in e.g. RHEL 8 we could switch fully to pyproject.toml, i.e. replacing setup.cfg
But even without that it looks like we don't loose anything by adding pyproject.toml as older pip versions seem to ignore it.
If we define a minimum pip version we can do a comprehensive test with the first and last minor version of every supported major version of pip

[aphmschonewille]

Hi gents,

sorry if i'm asking an obvious question, but i'm stuck with an install that used to work on e.g. EL9 but no longer on EL10 as it's now python 3.12.

= how i install EB 5.2.0, which worked in EL9 (note: i run these as a user, not root):

    source /etc/profile
    source /etc/profile.d/modules.sh || true
    export EB_TMPDIR="/tmp/easybuild/eb_tmp"
    export PATH="$EB_TMPDIR/bin:$PATH"
    export PYTHONPATH="$(ls -rd -1 /tmp/easybuild/eb_tmp/lib*/python*/site-packages | tail -1):$PYTHONPATH"
    export EB_PYTHON=python3
    export EB_HOME=/opt/easybuild
    eb --install-latest-eb-release --prefix $EB_HOME --skip-sanity-check

what basically translates to:

/usr/bin/python3 -m pip install --prefix=/opt/easybuild/software/EasyBuild/5.2.0  --verbose --no-deps --ignore-installed --no-index --no-build-isolation .

ran inside the working (framework) directory.

= what do i see while debugging:

Using pip 23.3.2 from /usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pip (python 3.12)
Processing /trinity/easybuild/build/EasyBuild/5.2.0/system-system/easybuild-framework-5.2.0
  Running command Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml)
  error: invalid command 'bdist_wheel'
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error
  
  × Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) did not run successfully.
  │ exit code: 1
  ╰─> See above for output.

which i know has something to do with python3.12 changes towards venv but i do not know how else i would install EB.
It's not just throwing warnings at me, the install fails on a freshly installed Rocky10 and Alma10 distro.

i did install wheel, which ended up in /usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/ but seems to resolve for other projects.
I'm aware of Python 3 venv and the wheel package and build wheel error, but am stuck.

What am i doing wrong?

--Antoine

[boegel]

@aphmschonewille It may be better to ask for help on that through the EasyBuild Slack (link to join is available at https://easybuild.io/), your question is sort of out of context here (I think)

[aphmschonewille]

Hi Boegel,

Thanks for your reply. I do think it's a problem people will face going forward with any out-of-the-box Rocky, Alma or RHEL 10 release in the near future as it ships with python 3.12 which has a changed pip/venv behavior.

I'll approach the slack group. Hope someone has experienced this too and knows a way out.

-- Antoine
The TrinityX-team