On 2021-09-24 07:19:03 -0600 (-0600), Alex Schultz wrote:
[...]
> JFYI as I was looking into some other requirements issues
> yesterday, I hit this error with anyjson[0] 0.3.3 as well. It's
> used in a handful of projects[1] and there has not been a release
> since 2012[2] so this might be a problem in xena.  I haven't
> checked the projects respective gates, but just want to highlight
> we'll probably have additional fallout from the setuptools change.
[...]

Yes, we've also run into similar problems with pydot2 and
funcparserlib, and I'm sure there's plenty more of what is
effectively abandonware lingering in various projects' requirements
lists. The long and short of it is that people with newer versions
of SetupTools are going to be unable to install those, full stop.
The maintainers of some of them may be spurred to action and release
a new version, but in so doing may also drop support for older
interpreters we still test with on some stable branches (this was
the case with funcparserlib).

On the other hand, controlling what version of SetupTools others
have and use isn't always possible, unlike runtime dependencies, so
that really should be a solution of last resort. Making exceptions
to stable branch policy in unusual circumstances such as this seems
like a reasonable and more effective compromise.
--
Jeremy Stanley