Hello everyone,

I've been building some minimal python docker images for a while and a few days ago an error popped out in my CI when building python 3.8 on debian sid. The error happens when trying to install pip with the usual:

curl -fsSL https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python3.8 - setuptools

The message:

ERROR: Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/tmprv6tur0m/pip.zip/pip/_internal/cli/base_command.py", line 178, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "/tmp/tmprv6tur0m/pip.zip/pip/_internal/commands/install.py", line 405, in run
    installed = install_given_reqs(
  File "/tmp/tmprv6tur0m/pip.zip/pip/_internal/req/__init__.py", line 54, in install_given_reqs
    requirement.install(
  File "/tmp/tmprv6tur0m/pip.zip/pip/_internal/req/req_install.py", line 919, in install
    self.move_wheel_files(
  File "/tmp/tmprv6tur0m/pip.zip/pip/_internal/req/req_install.py", line 440, in move_wheel_files
    move_wheel_files(
  File "/tmp/tmprv6tur0m/pip.zip/pip/_internal/wheel.py", line 318, in move_wheel_files
    scheme = distutils_scheme(
  File "/tmp/tmprv6tur0m/pip.zip/pip/_internal/locations.py", line 180, in distutils_scheme
    i.finalize_options()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/distutils/command/install.py", line 306, in finalize_options
    (prefix, exec_prefix) = get_config_vars('prefix', 'exec_prefix')
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/distutils/sysconfig.py", line 501, in get_config_vars
    func()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/distutils/sysconfig.py", line 461, in _init_posix
    _temp = __import__(name, globals(), locals(), ['build_time_vars'], 0)
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_sysconfigdata__linux_x86_64-linux-gnu'


You can check the full CI output[0] or the building script if you need to[1].

I've checked for similar bugs and I found #28046 but I don't know if this is related or not.

Thanks for the great work and I'm looking forward to help you fix this issue.

Luis

[0]https://travis-ci.org/LuisAlejandro/dockershelf/jobs/557990064
[1]https://github.com/LuisAlejandro/dockershelf/blob/master/python/build-image.sh

New information on this:

python3-distutils for 3.8 exists on Debian (experimental) but python3 (which is kind of a meta-package) for 3.8 doesn't exist. It depends on python3.8 or python3.7, resulting in the installation on python3.7.

Perhaps this is a bug to report on Debian instead of here, idk.

Yes, this is most likely a packaging bug on Debian.

By the way, Python comes with an ensurepip module. To install pip, just execute "python3.8 -m ensurepip".

this is issue #37561, making the sysconfigdata file name not changing with the kernel version of the OS.  I need to commit that patch to the trunk and 3.8.  But apparently pip needs to be aware of that as well ...

Thanks Christian for the suggestion and Matthias.

Luis, I'm still trying to figure out why you are seeing that. Please could you report the package versions which are installed on the system?

dpkg -l python3.7 python3.8 python3-distutils