make build-debs is failing on develop

[kushaldas]

Description

The package build for xenial is now failing on develop.

Steps to Reproduce

• make build-debs

Expected Behavior

All packages should be built properly.

Actual Behavior

securedrop-app-code is failing to build with steps related to python packages installation (most probably pip).

randomerror.txt

Note: In the focal_pacakge_bulid branch make build-debs-focal is working.

Comments

Suggestions to fix, any other relevant information.

[emkll]

Looks like the following diff resolves for me locally (h/t @chigby @SaptakS)

We should understand why this regression occurred. While we pin setuptools in dev-requirements.txt, is this specific version of setuptools not used with dh_virtualenv?

diff --git a/install_files/ansible-base/roles/build-securedrop-app-code-deb-pkg/tasks/main.yml b/install_files/ansible-base/roles/build-securedrop-app-code-deb-pkg/tasks/main.yml
index c34bb8542..268b0c87f 100644
--- a/install_files/ansible-base/roles/build-securedrop-app-code-deb-pkg/tasks/main.yml
+++ b/install_files/ansible-base/roles/build-securedrop-app-code-deb-pkg/tasks/main.yml
@@ -106,6 +106,7 @@
     chdir: "{{ securedrop_app_code_deb_dir }}"
   environment:
     DH_VIRTUALENV_INSTALL_ROOT: "/opt/venvs"
+    SETUPTOOLS_USE_DISTUTILS: "stdlib"
 
 - name: Find newly built Debian package
   find:

[rmol]

I think this comment explains it well enough.

As far as I've been able to find, only in dh-virtualenv 1.0 or later can you specify the version of setuptools you want it to use, with the DH_UPGRADE_SETUPTOOLS environment variable.

Getting a recent version of dh-virtualenv to install on Xenial is probably going to take some time, if it's possible at all.

Looks to me like the expedient fix is SETUPTOOLS_USE_DISTUTILS.