Bug#1053718: python3-xarray: xarray reports version 999 because the importlib.metadata is using the fallback version

[Mark Harfouche]

Package: python3-xarray
Version: 2023.08.0-1ubuntu5
Severity: normal
X-Debbugs-Cc: mark.harfouche at gmail.com

Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?
     apt install python3-xarray (on ubuntu 23.10). Then

     python3 -c "import xarray; assert(xarray.__version__.startswith('201')"

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

     python3 -c "from importlib.metadata import version as _version; print(_version('xarray'))"

   * What was the outcome of this action?

     wrong version reported. In fact, the fallback version in the
     setup.py is reported.

   * What outcome did you expect instead?

     The version of xarray to be correctly reported.


I feel like a build tool is missing since conda-forge doesn't do much
special during the build phase.

We do have `setuptoos-scm` installed.

https://github.com/conda-forge/xarray-feedstock/blob/main/recipe/meta.yaml#L21


-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
  APT prefers mantic
  APT policy: (500, 'mantic')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.5.1-060501-generic (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages python3-xarray depends on:
ii  python3            3.11.4-5
ii  python3-jinja2     3.1.2-1
ii  python3-numpy      1:1.24.2-1
ii  python3-packaging  23.1-1
ii  python3-pandas     1.5.3+dfsg-6

Versions of packages python3-xarray recommends:
ii  python3-bottleneck  1.3.5+ds1-2build1
ii  python3-cftime      1.6.2-3build1
ii  python3-dask        2023.8.0+dfsg-2
ii  python3-h5netcdf    1.2.0-1
ii  python3-netcdf4     1.6.4-1
ii  python3-rasterio    1.3.8-1
ii  python3-sparse      0.13.0-1
ii  python3-zarr        2.16.0+ds-1

Versions of packages python3-xarray suggests:
pn  python-xarray-doc   <none>
pn  python3-cartopy     <none>
ii  python3-matplotlib  3.6.3-1ubuntu2
pn  python3-pydap       <none>
ii  python3-scipy       1.10.1-2
pn  python3-seaborn     <none>
ii  python3-toolz       0.12.0-1

-- no debconf information