pdm install fails to create editable package

Since yesterday I have encountered this problem. We can’t build the editable package (–no-editable is a workaround).

My teammate tells me that it works on his machine (he’s on Manjaro). I am on Ubuntu 22.04. We both have reproduced the problem on a python-debian container:

Dockerfile:

FROM python:3.10.4-slim-buster
RUN pip install pdm
VOLUME /code
WORKDIR /code

pyproject.toml:

[project]
authors = [
  {name = "Tommy"},
]
dependencies = []
description = "Bug project"
name = "bug-project"
readme = "README.md"
requires-python = ">=3.10"
dynamic = ["version"]
license = {text = "Proprietary"}


[project.optional-dependencies]

[build-sytem]
build-backend = "pdm.pep517.api"
requires = ["pdm-pep517"]

[tool.pdm]
version = {use_scm = true}

How to run:

docker build -t pdm-test .
docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd):/code  pdm-test pdm install -v

Result:

Installing the project as an editable package...
Preparing isolated env for PEP 517 build...
Building wheel for file:///code#egg=bug-project
Collecting wheel
  Downloading wheel-0.37.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (35 kB)
Collecting setuptools>=40.8.0
  Downloading setuptools-62.2.0-py3-none-any.whl (1.1 MB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1.1/1.1 MB 10.3 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing collected packages: wheel, setuptools
Successfully installed setuptools-62.2.0 wheel-0.37.1
WARNING: Running pip as the 'root' user can result in broken permissions and conflicting behaviour with the system package manager. It is recommended to use a virtual environment instead: https://pip.pypa.io/warnings/venv
Collecting setuptools_pep660
  Downloading setuptools_pep660-0.1.3-py3-none-any.whl (4.1 kB)
Collecting wheel
  Using cached wheel-0.37.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (35 kB)
Collecting setuptools<61,>=42
  Downloading setuptools-60.10.0-py3-none-any.whl (1.1 MB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1.1/1.1 MB 6.6 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing collected packages: wheel, setuptools, setuptools_pep660
Successfully installed setuptools-62.2.0 setuptools_pep660-0.1.3 wheel-0.37.1
WARNING: Running pip as the 'root' user can result in broken permissions and conflicting behaviour with the system package manager. It is recommended to use a virtual environment instead: https://pip.pypa.io/warnings/venv
/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/config/__init__.py:28: SetuptoolsDeprecationWarning: As setuptools moves its configuration towards `pyproject.toml`,
`setuptools.config.parse_configuration` became deprecated.

For the time being, you can use the `setuptools.config.setupcfg` module
to access a backward compatible API, but this module is provisional
and might be removed in the future.

  warnings.warn(dedent(msg), SetuptoolsDeprecationWarning)
/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/installer.py:27: SetuptoolsDeprecationWarning: setuptools.installer is deprecated. Requirements should be satisfied by a PEP 517 installer.
  warnings.warn(
/usr/local/bin/python: No module named pip
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/installer.py", line 82, in fetch_build_egg
    subprocess.check_call(cmd)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/subprocess.py", line 369, in check_call
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['/usr/local/bin/python', '-m', 'pip', '--disable-pip-version-check', 'wheel', '--no-deps', '-w', '/tmp/tmp_ya6l2qu', '--quiet', 'setuptools<61,>=42']' returned non-zero exit status 1.

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py", line 363, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py", line 345, in main
    json_out['return_val'] = hook(**hook_input['kwargs'])
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py", line 283, in build_editable
    return hook(wheel_directory, config_settings, metadata_directory)
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools_pep660/__init__.py", line 11, in build_editable
    return setuptools.build_meta._BACKEND._build_with_temp_dir(
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 229, in _build_with_temp_dir
    self.run_setup()
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 174, in run_setup
    exec(compile(code, __file__, 'exec'), locals())
  File "setup.py", line 28, in <module>
    setup(**setup_kwargs)
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/__init__.py", line 155, in setup
    return distutils.core.setup(**attrs)
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/_distutils/core.py", line 135, in setup
    ok = dist.parse_command_line()
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/_distutils/dist.py", line 484, in parse_command_line
    args = self._parse_command_opts(parser, args)
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py", line 1070, in _parse_command_opts
    nargs = _Distribution._parse_command_opts(self, parser, args)
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/_distutils/dist.py", line 540, in _parse_command_opts
    cmd_class = self.get_command_class(command)
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py", line 916, in get_command_class
    self._install_dependencies(ep)
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py", line 882, in _install_dependencies
    self.fetch_build_egg(pkg_resources.Requirement(str(req)))
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py", line 907, in fetch_build_egg
    return fetch_build_egg(self, req)
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/installer.py", line 84, in fetch_build_egg
    raise DistutilsError(str(e)) from e
distutils.errors.DistutilsError: Command '['/usr/local/bin/python', '-m', 'pip', '--disable-pip-version-check', 'wheel', '--no-deps', '-w', '/tmp/tmp_ya6l2qu', '--quiet', 'setuptools<61,>=42']' returned non-zero exit status 1.
Install bug-project 0.0.0 failed
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/pdm", line 8, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/core.py", line 233, in main
    return Core().main(args)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/core.py", line 168, in main
    raise cast(Exception, err).with_traceback(traceback)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/core.py", line 163, in main
    f(options.project, options)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/cli/commands/install.py", line 49, in handle
    actions.do_sync(
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/cli/actions.py", line 209, in do_sync
    handler.synchronize()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/installers/synchronizers.py", line 389, in synchronize
    self.install_candidate(self_key)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/installers/synchronizers.py", line 207, in install_candidate
    self.manager.install(can)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/installers/manager.py", line 39, in install
    installer(prepared.build(), self.environment, prepared.direct_url())
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/models/candidates.py", line 331, in build
    self.wheel = builder.build(build_dir, metadata_directory=self._metadata_dir)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/builders/editable.py", line 57, in build
    return self.build(out_dir, config_settings, metadata_directory)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/builders/editable.py", line 52, in build
    filename = self._hook.build_editable(
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pep517/wrappers.py", line 261, in build_editable
    return self._call_hook('build_editable', {
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pep517/wrappers.py", line 322, in _call_hook
    self._subprocess_runner(
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/builders/base.py", line 238, in subprocess_runner
    return log_subprocessor(cmd, cwd, extra_environ=env)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pdm/builders/base.py", line 86, in log_subprocessor
    raise BuildError(
pdm.exceptions.BuildError: Call command ['/usr/local/bin/python', '/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py', 'build_editable', '/tmp/tmplq5e_c0n'] return non-zero status(1).

We suspect the problem comes from not finding pip:

 warnings.warn(dedent(msg), SetuptoolsDeprecationWarning)
/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/installer.py:27: SetuptoolsDeprecationWarning: setuptools.installer is deprecated. Requirements should be satisfied by a PEP 517 installer.
  warnings.warn(
/usr/local/bin/python: No module named pip
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/pdm-build-env-3x_k6j72-shared/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/installer.py", line 82, in fetch_build_egg
    subprocess.check_call(cmd)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/subprocess.py", line 369, in check_call
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['/usr/local/bin/python', '-m', 'pip', '--disable-pip-version-check', 'wheel', '--no-deps', '-w', '/tmp/tmp_ya6l2qu', '--quiet', 'setuptools<61,>=42']' returned non-zero exit status 1.

We verified that we have pip:

/usr/local/bin/python -m pip --version
 pip 22.0.4 from /usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pip (python 3.10)