The switch to the included distutils that happened in 48.0.0 broke the build on NetBSD, at least in the way setuptools is built from pkgsrc:
(cd /scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/setuptools-48.0.0/ && /usr/bin/env <some environment vars elided> /usr/pkg/bin/python3.7 setup.py "install" -c -O1 --root=/scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/.destdir)
running install
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/setuptools-48.0.0/setuptools/_distutils/sysconfig.py", line 460, in _init_posix
_temp = __import__(name, globals(), locals(), ['build_time_vars'], 0)
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_sysconfigdata__netbsd9_'
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "setup.py", line 154, in <module>
dist = setuptools.setup(**setup_params)
File "/scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/setuptools-48.0.0/setuptools/__init__.py", line 164, in setup
return distutils.core.setup(**attrs)
File "/scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/setuptools-48.0.0/setuptools/_distutils/core.py", line 148, in setup
dist.run_commands()
File "/scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/setuptools-48.0.0/setuptools/_distutils/dist.py", line 967, in run_commands
self.run_command(cmd)
File "/scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/setuptools-48.0.0/setuptools/_distutils/dist.py", line 985, in run_command
cmd_obj.ensure_finalized()
File "/scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/setuptools-48.0.0/setuptools/_distutils/cmd.py", line 107, in ensure_finalized
self.finalize_options()
File "/scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/setuptools-48.0.0/setuptools/command/install.py", line 38, in finalize_options
orig.install.finalize_options(self)
File "/scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/setuptools-48.0.0/setuptools/_distutils/command/install.py", line 298, in finalize_options
(prefix, exec_prefix) = get_config_vars('prefix', 'exec_prefix')
File "/scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/setuptools-48.0.0/setuptools/_distutils/sysconfig.py", line 504, in get_config_vars
func()
File "/scratch/devel/py-setuptools/work/setuptools-48.0.0/setuptools/_distutils/sysconfig.py", line 464, in _init_posix
'_sysconfigdata', globals(), locals(), ['build_time_vars'], 0)
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_sysconfigdata'
*** Error code 1
setuptools 47.3.2 works when built the same way.
The switch to the included distutils that happened in 48.0.0 broke the build on NetBSD, at least in the way setuptools is built from pkgsrc:
setuptools 47.3.2 works when built the same way.