Experiments in removing setup.py

[Cadair]

This is a very quick hack at #32.

The main issue here is that get_compiler() is making a dummy Distribution object to give it a hook to get the compiler options, which is calling the entry point function which is calling get_compiler in an infinite loop.

We might want to consider pausing this work until we resolve the future of this package without distutils.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Merging #33 (b3273e0) into master (46f6c46) will decrease coverage by 1.90%.
The diff coverage is 22.22%.

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##           master      #33      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   81.04%   79.13%   -1.91%     
==========================================
  Files           4        4              
  Lines         269      278       +9     
==========================================
+ Hits          218      220       +2     
- Misses         51       58       +7     

Impacted Files	Coverage Δ
extension_helpers/__init__.py	46.15% <22.22%> (-53.85%)	⬇️

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[astrofrog]

I think the downstream failures are actually unrelated and due to astropy/astropy#12425

[astrofrog]

@olebole - just out of curiosity, does/can Debian packaging deal with packages that have no setup.py file but just the declarative setup configuration in setup.cfg? This is something setuptools supports but just curious if this would cause issues with Debian packaging if we started to roll this out across the astropy project.

[olebole]

@astrofrog not (yet) out of the box. I can, however, run whatever I want for the build, so it would be not a big problem. And I would guess that our Python "magic" will support it sooner or later. I could open a bug to trigger this extension if you like.

For reference: What I just tried was to remove from my latest new package, cmyt the trivial setup.py. The current Python debhelper 5.20220119 fails with

dh binary --with python3 --buildsystem=pybuild
   dh_update_autotools_config -O--buildsystem=pybuild
   dh_autoreconf -O--buildsystem=pybuild
   dh_auto_configure -O--buildsystem=pybuild
I: pybuild base:237: python3.10 setup.py config 
python3.10: can't open file '/build/cmyt-1.0.4/setup.py': [Errno 2] No such file or directory
E: pybuild pybuild:367: configure: plugin distutils failed with: exit code=2: python3.10 setup.py config 
dh_auto_configure: error: pybuild --configure -i python{version} -p "3.10 3.9" returned exit code 13
make: *** [debian/rules:6: binary] Error 25
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules binary subprocess returned exit status 2
I: copying local configuration
E: Failed autobuilding of package

so one sees that it just tries to run setup.py.

Update This feature is planned, see Debian#1001459 (comment)

[Cadair]

We aren't actually using this?

[astrofrog]

Yes guess we can remove this line

[Cadair]

😆

[astrofrog]

@olebole - thanks for the update!

[Cadair]

I think this looks good, I am happy with it if you are @astrofrog (I can't approve my own PR!)