setuptools version

setuptools>=73.0

Python version

3.8+

OS

macOS

Additional environment information

No response

Description

Setuptools contains a number of vendored packages. In Setuptools 71.0.0 and earlier (inclusive), these were "just folders" - the contents of the code for those dependencies, included in the setuptools package so the dependencies could be used without the bootstrapping issue of installing the dependencies of a dependency management tool.

As of 00384a5, released in Setuptools 71.0.1, these vendored packages also include the dist-info data for those packages.

There are also some "transitive" vendor dependencies; the _distutils package itself has a _vendor subpackage. As of 0f6ed20, released in setuptools 73.0, this folder contains a .dist-info folder for the packaging dependency; however, the macOS wheel only contain licenses files in the `_distutils/_vendor/packaging-24.0.dist-info folder. The WHEEL, RECORD, METADATA, INSTALLER and REQUESTED files have not been included in the wheel.

It's not clear what the intended behaviour is here. The inclusion of .dist-info folders may have been intentional; however, it's not immediately obvious to me that it is. AIUI, these dist-info packages can't be used by importib, as the _vendor subfolder isn't directly on the PYTHONPATH. The files in the _vendor folder are included in the manifest of the top-level setuptools package metadata, so they haven't been included to avoid that duplication.

If it was intentional, then the macOS wheels for 73.0+ are incomplete, as the distutils vendored version of packaging has an invalid .dist-info folder.

This problem was observed as beeware/briefcase#1970, which needs to do some post-install processing on installed dependencies. This involves looking for .dist-info folders to find content that need to be post-processed; this has historically been done with a **/*.dist-info glob. As a result, it found the _distutils/_vendor/packaging-24.0.dist-info folder, but then broke because it isn't a valid dist-info folder.

To be clear - this is also a bug in Briefcase, as we should only be looking for top-level dependencies. However, the inconsistent state of dist-info files in the published artefacts also seems like a possible bug.

Expected behavior

Either complete .dist-info packages for all vendored dependencies; or no .dist-info content in vendored dependencies.

How to Reproduce

Compare the setuptools/_distutil/_vendor/packaging-24.0.distinfo folder with the same content macOS wheels.

Output