CI Failures on Windows for Python 3.12.0a5

[rmartin16]

Describe the bug

CI is failing on Windows for (recently released) Python 3.12.0a5.

==============================================================================
FAIL: tests/platforms/android/gradle/test_create.py::test_extract_packages[test_sources8-"leading"]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
test_sources=['//leading']
app.test_sources=['//leading']
{'extract_packages': '""',
 'safe_formal_name': 'First App',
 'version_code': '100'}

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\user\github\beeware\briefcase\tests\platforms\android\gradle\test_create.py", line 112, in test_extract_packages
    assert context["extract_packages"] == expected
AssertionError: assert '""' == '"leading"'
  - "leading"
  + ""

==============================================================================
FAIL: tests/platforms/android/gradle/test_create.py::test_extract_packages[test_sources21-"leading"]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
test_sources=['\\\\leading']
app.test_sources=['\\\\leading']
{'extract_packages': '""',
 'safe_formal_name': 'First App',
 'version_code': '100'}

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\user\github\beeware\briefcase\tests\platforms\android\gradle\test_create.py", line 112, in test_extract_packages
    assert context["extract_packages"] == expected
AssertionError: assert '""' == '"leading"'
  - "leading"
  + ""

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(output augmented to include additional information)

Steps to reproduce

Run CI.

Expected behavior

CI should succeed.

I believe this CPython change is causing this new behavior.

I am not entirely sure what is necessary to resolve this, though. Based on the CPython fix, these are not really valid paths for Windows.

Notably, this CPython fix was backported to 3.11.

Screenshots

No response

Environment

• Operating System: Windows 10
• Python version: 3.12.0a5
• Software versions:
  • Briefcase: 0.3.13.dev33+g8d503064.d20230208

Logs

No response

Additional context

No response

[freakboy3742]

I'd like @mhsmith's take on this to be certain, but I think your analysis is correct - absolute paths are invalid tests in this case.

I could even see an argument that paths are invalid - it's a list of packages that should be extracted, not a list of paths, to my understanding. I think the paths will always be "android local" paths, and relative to the bundled Android app, so referring to them as if they were OS-local paths (and using Pathlib, which will use platform-appropriate separators) seems misleading at best.

[mhsmith]

These paths are actually from the project's test_sources setting, so they are on the build machine, and may be relative or absolute. Unfortunately it looks like there's been a change in the way Python deals with Windows network shares (also called "UNC" paths), which begin with two slashes. I'll look into this today.

[mhsmith]

Notably, this CPython fix was backported to 3.11.

The backport should have been released in 3.11.2, so in #1088 I've set that as the minimum version where we expect the new behavior. It was only released yesterday, so GitHub Actions hasn't picked it up yet.