imgconverter build relies on deprecated setup.py CLI

[DemiMarie]

Qubes OS release

Qubes OS 4.2, Qubes OS 4.3

Brief summary

The linux-utils/imgconverter Makefile relies on $(PYTHON) setup.py, but that is deprecated. The recommendation is to use third-party tools instead.

Steps to reproduce

1. Run make in linux-utils/imgconverter.
2. Observe the deprecation warning in stderr.

Expected behavior

The deprecated setup.py CLI is not used.

Actual behavior

The deprecated setup.py CLI is used.

Additional information

https://blog.ganssle.io/articles/2021/10/setup-py-deprecated.html

[DemiMarie]

Also see pypa/setuptools#2088: setup.py install is going to be removed in a month or so.

[marmarek]

I'd rather avoid 3rd-party tools just to copy few files around... But fortunately, setuptools itlsef remains supported, just needs to be configured using setup.cfg instead of setup.py.

[DemiMarie]

My reading of the issue is that using setuptools for building and installation is itself unsupported. In this case, there is no actual build step, so a plain makefile would work.

[DemiMarie]

See:

setuptools has historically had features of both front-ends (e.g. installation) and back-ends (e.g. build), and since there are new de facto standards for all the front-end actions, setuptools is getting out of the business of being any sort of CLI application.

In this case there is no build step needed, so setuptools should not be used at all.