wheel build fails due to dependency issues

[cg505]

On a new dev installation of .[all] in a uv venv:

$ sky launch
...
RuntimeError: Failed to build pip wheel for SkyPilot. Error message:   error: subprocess-exited-with-error

  × python setup.py egg_info did not run successfully.
  │ exit code: 1
  ╰─> [1 lines of output]
      ERROR: Can not execute `setup.py` since setuptools is not available in the build environment.
      [end of output]

  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
error: metadata-generation-failed

× Encountered error while generating package metadata.
╰─> See above for output.

note: This is an issue with the package mentioned above, not pip.
hint: See above for details.

What happened:

• wheel v0.46 dropped bdist_wheel because setuptools >=v70.1 supports it https://github.com/pypa/wheel/releases/tag/0.46.0
  • see also v0.46.0 Breaking CI build pipelines pypa/wheel#660
• we end up using setuptools v51 (Jan 2021) because:
  • skypilot[all] depends on vastai-sdk
  • vastai-sdk depends on borb==2.0.17 (Jan 2022) https://github.com/vast-ai/vast-sdk/blob/b83bca48c5d8f6bdb428a68587c1b577b2f8e5e8/setup.py#L18
  • borb 2.0.17 depends on setuptools~=51.1.1 https://github.com/jorisschellekens/borb/blob/v2.0.17/setup.py#L22

How to fix: not sure, we could pin wheel to v0.45.1. Ideally we can use a newer version of setuptools.

[cg505]

Updated impact: affects any new installation of skypilot, including stable, unless a working version of wheel (<0.46.0) is installed, or a working version of setuptools (>=70.1) is installed and [vast] is not installed.

Verified that pinning wheel fixes the issue. Opened PRs for master (nightly) and 0.8.

[cg505]

Short term fix: pin wheel <0.46.0

Long term fix: pin setuptools >=70.1?

[munterkalmsteiner]

Hm, this does not fix the problem, at least not for me.

sky -v
skypilot, version 0.8.1

wheel version
wheel  0.45.1

pip show setuptools
Name: setuptools
Version: 51.1.2

pip show vastai-sdk
Name: vastai-sdk
Version: 0.1.16

[cg505]

@munterkalmsteiner What error are you seeing?
As long as you have wheel v0.45.1, skypilot should work.

[munterkalmsteiner]

Exactly the same error as reported in the initial bug report by you.

[munterkalmsteiner]

Huh, I've purged the installation and installed everything new. The first time, no change (same error as reported initially). Then uninstalled again all packages (pip freeze | xargs pip uninstall -y), install skypilot[lambda] and then I could deploy a job on lambda. Installed now again skypilot[vast] and that works now too, i.e. no error. Sorry for the noise, I guess.