BUG: [py3.11] AttributeError: 'PathDistribution' object has no attribute '_normalized_name'

[h-vetinari]

This shows up while trying to run the numpy test suite with python 3.11 and the newest pytest etc.

==================================== ERRORS ====================================
________________________ ERROR collecting test session _________________________

[...]

=========================== short test summary info ============================
ERROR  - AttributeError: 'PathDistribution' object has no attribute '_normalized_name'
ERROR  - AttributeError: 'PathDistribution' object has no attribute '_normalized_name'
2 errors in 1.41s

More precisely, the error appears in the vendored import_lib module

[...]/lib/python3.11/importlib/metadata/__init__.py:472: in load
    ordered = sorted(eps, key=by_group)
        by_group   = operator.attrgetter('group')
        cls        = <class 'importlib.metadata.SelectableGroups'>
        eps        = <itertools.chain object at 0x7f19804ea5f0>
[...]/lib/python3.11/importlib/metadata/__init__.py:1013: in <genexpr>
    eps = itertools.chain.from_iterable(
        .0         = <generator object unique_everseen at 0x7f19805e9d40>
[...]/lib/python3.11/importlib/metadata/_itertools.py:16: in unique_everseen
    k = key(element)
E   AttributeError: 'PathDistribution' object has no attribute '_normalized_name'
        element    = <importlib_metadata.PathDistribution object at 0x7f19802c0450>
        iterable   = <itertools.chain object at 0x7f19804eae00>
        key        = operator.attrgetter('_normalized_name')
        seen       = set()
        seen_add   = <built-in method add of set object at 0x7f198035b060>

Turns out this is python/importlib_metadata#396 (fixed in 4.13.0), where @jaraco noted:

Perhaps importlib_metadata should provide a compatibility shim to honor name normalization in distributions not supplying it (or at least not crash).

Unfortunately, the vendored version present in python 3.11 is only at 4.11.3, hence does not carry the fix.

[h-vetinari]

In the meantime, a work-around is to install importlib_metadata >=4.13.

[jaraco]

It looks like applying python/importlib_metadata@3e52430 should do the trick. Because #97785 is already in main, the changes will need to be applied to the 3.11 branch directly.

[jaraco]

I note that 4.12.0 also includes changes that I'd previously not backported to Python 3.11 (#94270). @pablogsal Are you okay with changes from importlib_metadata 4.11.4-4.13.0 being applied as a bugfix for Python 3.11?

[jaraco]

I've applied the changes to the 3.11 branch with:

 cpython 3.11 $ http --follow /~https://github.com/python/importlib_metadata/archive/3e52430a4a4cec3ac06ab78ff6909a9c3ac62426.zip | bsdtar -x --strip-components 1