When I try to build APSW (http://rogerbinns.github.io/apsw/index.html) with Python 3.3 or 3.4 on Debian stable 64-bit I get the error output shown below.

I dug into the source and it seems that the problem is that distutils/ccompiler.py's gen_preprocess_options() functions expects to get a sequence of macros and each macro *must* be a 1 or 2 item tuple.

But for some reason during the APSW build it gets a 2 item list which it then chokes on.

Now, the code really does need a tuple because in some cases it uses Python's % print formatting option as in "-D%s=%s" % macro -- and this won't work if macro is a list.

I solved this problem for me by adding two lines, shown here in context:

    pp_opts = []
    for macro in macros:
        if isinstance(macro, list): # NEW
            macro = tuple(macro)    # NEW

I don't know how safe or wise a fix this is, but it did work for me for a locally built (from www.python.org tarball) 3.3 and 3.4.


$ /home/mark/opt/python34/bin/python3 setup.py fetch --all build --enable-all-extensions install
running fetch
  Getting download page to work out current SQLite version
    Fetching https://sqlite.org/download.html
    Version is 3.8.7.1
  Getting the SQLite amalgamation
    Fetching https://sqlite.org/2014/sqlite-autoconf-3080701.tar.gz
    Length: 1998389  SHA1: 5601be1263842209d7c5dbf6128f1cc0b6bbe2e5  MD5: 8ee4541ebb3e5739e7ef5e9046e30063
    Checksums verified
    Running configure to work out SQLite compilation flags
setup.py:53: DeprecationWarning: 'U' mode is deprecated
  f=open(name, mode)
running build
running build_ext
SQLite: Using amalgamation /home/mark/zip/apsw-3.8.7.1-r1/sqlite3/sqlite3.c
setup.py:624: ResourceWarning: unclosed file <_io.TextIOWrapper name=4 encoding='UTF-8'>
  for part in shlex.split(os.popen("icu-config --cppflags", "r").read()):
setup.py:637: ResourceWarning: unclosed file <_io.TextIOWrapper name=4 encoding='UTF-8'>
  for part in shlex.split(os.popen("icu-config --ldflags", "r").read()):
ICU: Added includes, flags and libraries from icu-config
building 'apsw' extension
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 862, in <module>
    'win64hackvars': win64hackvars}
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/core.py", line 148, in setup
    dist.run_commands()
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/dist.py", line 955, in run_commands
    self.run_command(cmd)
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/dist.py", line 974, in run_command
    cmd_obj.run()
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/command/build.py", line 126, in run
    self.run_command(cmd_name)
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/cmd.py", line 313, in run_command
    self.distribution.run_command(command)
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/dist.py", line 974, in run_command
    cmd_obj.run()
  File "setup.py", line 661, in run
    v=beparent.run(self)
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/command/build_ext.py", line 339, in run
    self.build_extensions()
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/command/build_ext.py", line 448, in build_extensions
    self.build_extension(ext)
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/command/build_ext.py", line 503, in build_extension
    depends=ext.depends)
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/ccompiler.py", line 566, in compile
    depends, extra_postargs)
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/ccompiler.py", line 341, in _setup_compile
    pp_opts = gen_preprocess_options(macros, incdirs)
  File "/home/mark/opt/python34/lib/python3.4/distutils/ccompiler.py", line 1061, in gen_preprocess_options
    % macro)
TypeError: bad macro definition '['_FORTIFY_SOURCE', '2']': each element of 'macros' list must be a 1- or 2-tuple

Have you reported this problem to the author of apsw?  It seems like figuring out why apsw is apparently creating an incorrect setup.py configuration should be a first step before suggesting a change to Distutils.  You might want to supply the values from your system for:

icu-config --cppflags
icu-config --ldflags

FWIW, with a current Debian testing, I get the following failure with either Python 3.4 or 2.7:

running build_ext
SQLite: Using amalgamation /tmp/e/apsw-3.8.7.1-r1/sqlite3/sqlite3.c
### icu-config: Can't find /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libicuuc.so - ICU prefix is wrong.
###      Try the --prefix= option
###      or --detect-prefix
###      (If you want to disable this check, use  the --noverify option)
### icu-config: Exitting.
### icu-config: Can't find /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libicuuc.so - ICU prefix is wrong.
###      Try the --prefix= option
###      or --detect-prefix
###      (If you want to disable this check, use  the --noverify option)
### icu-config: Exitting.
ICU: Unable to determine includes/libraries for ICU using icu-config
ICU: You will need to manually edit setup.py or setup.cfg to set them

So there may be issues with icu-config on Debian.  (Also, Python 3.3 is now in security-fix only mode.)

Another data point: apsw appears to build OK on OS X with a MacPorts-supplied icu, including icu-config.

The first person I asked was the author of APSW (Roger Binns). He told me:

"The ultimate cause of that is some interaction with the compilation
environment.  Some sort of CFLAGS is ultimately ending up in some
Python code like above when it should be [ ('_FORTIFY_SOURCE', '2') ].
 Note this is not part of the APSW source - it is something external."

"I have seen it before when using the Ubuntu PPA build service.  When
building locally everything was fine, but the build service injected
_FORTIFY_SOURCE like above and got it wrong.  I presume your version
of Debian is doing something similar.  Sadly I have no idea how to fix it."

So clearly he believes it is not a problem with his setup.py file.

Also, it strikes me as a bit unpythonic that a function should demand a specific type (i.e., tuple) especially when this is just for the convenience of being able to use % formatting.

I'm not asking or expecting you to add my change to distutils; but at least now if someone encounters the same problem, they will have a potential fix.

Here are the flags you asked for:

$ icu-config --cppflags
-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -D_REENTRANT  -I/usr/include 
$ icu-config --ldflags
-Wl,-z,relro  -ldl -lm   -L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu -licui18n -licuuc -licudata  -ldl -lm

Shouldn't this be fixed in the APSW setup.py ?

The patch is you are proposing looks harmless, but it can also
mask programming errors in setup.py.

> The ultimate cause of that is some interaction with the compilation
> environment.  Some sort of CFLAGS is ultimately ending up in some
> Python code like above when it should be [ ('_FORTIFY_SOURCE', '2') ].
> Note this is not part of the APSW source - it is something external.

That's as unhelpful as a bug report can get. If ICU doesn't provide the right types, the setup.py should fix them up.
(assuming ICU provides the preprocessor flags here - I haven't check)

I suggest closing.

I was able to reproduce the behavior you saw with an older Debian system.  The following patch to the apsw setup.py file seems to fix the problem:

--- apsw-3.8.7.1-r1/setup.py	2014-11-04 19:23:36.000000000 -0800
+++ apsw-3.8.7.1-r1_PATCHED/setup.py	2014-11-11 02:01:16.000000000 -0800
@@ -628,7 +628,7 @@
                 elif part.startswith("-D"):
                     part=part[2:]
                     if '=' in part:
-                        part=part.split('=', 1)
+                        part=tuple(part.split('=', 1))
                     else:
                         part=(part, '1')
                     ext.define_macros.append(part)

Also, requiring a tuple is the documented behavior of Distutils:

https://docs.python.org/2/distutils/apiref.html#distutils.core.Extension

I agree that the issue should be closed and am closing it.

I've notified APSW's author and I'm sure he'll fix it. Thanks!