Dropped use of depricated python3-setuptools / distutils.

[petterreinholdtsen]

Make sure sysconfig.get_path("platlib") return correct path on Debian systems, where /usr/lib/ should be used over /usr/local/lib.

Based on e2c10a8 by Andy Pugh,

Fixes Debian issue #1080668.

[petterreinholdtsen]

See also #3154 and https://bugs.debian.org/1080668 .

[petterreinholdtsen]

I do not understand why configure still report "checking for site-package location... /usr/lib/python3.9/dist-packages" on bullseye, when it should be reporting /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages after my regex rewrite. When running the code in question manually on bullseye, the correct path show up.

[petterreinholdtsen]

[andypugh]

Bullseye is not supported by the master branch any more, anyway. Though arguably this fix needs to go into 2.9 to get tinto Trixie if Trixie is to lose distutils.

Good point. I'll try to remember to rebase on 2.9 when I am happy with the change. I do not like that I have no idea why the python oneliner still fail on bullseye, and am thus reluctant to merge it anywhere.

…

-- Happy hacking Petter Reinholdtsen

[andypugh]

[andypugh]
Bullseye is not supported by the master branch
Good point.

It wasn't a good point, I deleted it, but not fast enough.

Buster is not supported, Bullseye is still supported (and, in fact, current?)
http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MinimumSoftwareVersions

[stefanor]

Sorry, I don't have a whole lot of context for the package, abut I can comment on supporting installing on Debian's python.

[Eckeneckepen]

Configure has the following result:
2024-10-20T14:44:57.8858950Z checking for Python site-packages path... /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages
instead of the required /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages

If you call your python statement, you get 3 rows. The last one is correct. Configure seems to consider the first row only:
python3 -c 'import sysconfig; import re; p1=sysconfig.get_path("platlib"); print(p1); p2=p1.replace("/site-packages", "/dist-packages"); print(p2); print(re.sub("/python3[^/]+/","/python3/", p2))'
=>

/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages
/usr/lib/python3.9/dist-packages
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages

If you remove the unnecessary print()s it should work on Bullseye:
python3 -c 'import sysconfig; import re; p1=sysconfig.get_path("platlib"); p2=p1.replace("/site-packages", "/dist-packages"); print(re.sub("/python3[^/]+/","/python3/", p2))'
=>
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages

But it won't work on Bookworm due to an additional "local":
python3 -c 'import sysconfig; import re; p1=sysconfig.get_path("platlib"); p2=p1.replace("/site-packages", "/dist-packages"); print(re.sub("/python3[^/]+/","/python3/", p2))'
=>
/usr/local/lib/python3/dist-packages

Possible solution, but then you can also hardcode it directly:
python3 -c 'import sysconfig; import re; p1=sysconfig.get_path("platlib"); p2=p1.replace("/site-packages", "/dist-packages"); p3=re.sub("/python3[^/]+/","/python3/", p2); print(p3.replace("local/", ""))'

dist-packages is only used by Debian and its derivates and not by other distributions.
This solution is incompatible to non-Debian distributions.

Why not using my proposal?
#3155

It hard codes the old Bullseye only. This could be replaced by
python3 -c 'import sysconfig; import re; p1=sysconfig.get_path("platlib"); p2=p1.replace("/site-packages", "/dist-packages"); print(re.sub("/python3[^/]+/","/python3/", p2))'

[petterreinholdtsen]

See #3159 for new upstream editions of the ax_python*.m4 files.