[ptxdist] Bug: Apparent unsolved circular dependency in HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_SETUPTOOLS

[ptxdist] Bug: Apparent unsolved circular dependency in HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_SETUPTOOLS

[David Jander]

Hi Michael,

While migrating a project to 2026.02.0 and building from scratch I came
across this build error:

----------------------------------------------
target: host-system-python3-setuptools.compile
----------------------------------------------

[...]
 
ImportError: Cannot import `packaging.licenses`.
        Setuptools>=77.0.0 requires "packaging>=24.2" to work properly.
        Please make sure you have a suitable version installed.
        
So apparently HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_SETUPTOOLS is missing a dependency on
HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_PACKAGING.

But adding this dependency and running oldconfig gets me this:

[..]host-system-python3-flit-core.in:3:error: recursive dependency detected!
[..]host-system-python3-flit-core.in:3:      symbol HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_FLIT_CORE is selected by HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_PACKAGING
[..]host-system-python3-packaging.in:3:      symbol HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_PACKAGING is selected by HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_SETUPTOOLS
[..]rules/host-system-python3-setuptools.in:3:    symbol HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_SETUPTOOLS is selected by HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_FLIT_CORE

And indeed:

$ cat /usr/local/lib/ptxdist-2026.02.0/rules/host-system-python3-packaging.in
## SECTION=hosttools_noprompt

config HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_PACKAGING
        tristate
        default y if ALLYES
        select HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3
        select HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_FLIT_CORE

$ cat /usr/local/lib/ptxdist-2026.02.0/rules/host-system-python3-flit-core.in
## SECTION=hosttools_noprompt

config HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_FLIT_CORE
        tristate
        default y if ALLYES
        select HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3
        select HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_SETUPTOOLS

I solved this for my particular situation by removing "select
HOST_SYSTEM_PYTHON3_SETUPTOOLS" from host-system-python3-flit-core.in

I assume this will not work in every situation though. Not sure how to fix
this correctly and it is very possible that I am missing something here.

Best regards,

-- 
David Jander