[Bug 1812589] Re: pip's configparser dependency breaks backports namespace conventions

[Kai Kasurinen]

*** This bug is a duplicate of bug 1821247 ***
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1821247

** Package changed: python-pip (Ubuntu) => configparser (Ubuntu)

** This bug has been marked a duplicate of bug 1821247
   python-configparser 3.5.0-1 breaks the python backports namespace

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to configparser in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1812589

Title:
  pip's configparser dependency breaks backports namespace conventions

Status in configparser package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  This is specifically a problem with the debundling of the pip package,
  see https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/6149 for further discussion.

  Environment
  pip version: python-pip (9.0.1-2.3)
  Python version: Python 2.7.15+
  OS: Ubuntu 18.10

  Description
  The python-pip package (at least on Ubuntu 18.10) depends on the python-configparser package, which dumps a blank __init__.py into the /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/backports directory. However, backports should instead be defined as a namespace package (see PEP 420 and https://pypi.org/project/backports/). While this is not good in general, this is particularly problematic for pip because the some of packages it installs do not work as a result!

  Expected behavior
  pip should be able to install backports packages, which can then be imported without error.

  How to Reproduce
  After installing python-pip, run command pip install backports.shutil_which (the specific backports package does not particularly matter)
  Then run from backports.shutil_which import which inside a python shell
  An error occurs.

  Output
  >>> from backports.shutil_which import which
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  ImportError: No module named shutil_which```

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/configparser/+bug/1812589/+subscriptions