The import_module is not compatible with recent Python 3.12

[Jakuje]

The Python 3.12 removes several parts of the importlib python/cpython#98040 causing a build failure of this package under this python version, I believe in the following code parts:

https://github.com/frankmorgner/vsmartcard/blob/d2e607f4c68c5dc69ae1d73626d89df15e8c9eaf/virtualsmartcard/src/vpicc/virtualsmartcard/VirtualSmartcard.py#L367-L376

The build failures do not look self-explanatory though:

https://download.copr.fedorainfracloud.org/results/jjelen/vsmartcard/centos-stream-10-x86_64/07317358-virtualsmartcard/builder-live.log.gz

I would like to get this fixed, but I will not get to that in coming days so contributions, help, pointers always welcomed.

[frankmorgner]

Hmm, I don't see how the changes should affect the code. Also, this python version seems to work for me as expected...

[frankmorgner]

Here you find the fix for exactly the same error message (in python 3.12).

https://github.com/neovim/pynvim/pull/534/files#diff-30fa4df68b7ec17e985d7d0dd3536d8c469e0f118f262708e1449da29e33d479R29-R40

The fix is to use importlib.import_module instead of imp. However, vpicc already uses the former (i.e. NOT imp). I suspect, that some dependency uses the imp module, which is causing the problem.

You should be able to dig into the program using something like the following:

cd vsmartcard/virtualsmartcard/src
env PYTHONPATH=$PWD python3 -m pdb vicc.in --type=relay

[Jakuje]

Not sure if I do something wrong, but attempt to run vicc gives me the error that it can not find smartcard module:

[root@rhel-10-0-20240318-5 vpicc]# env PYTHONPATH=$PWD python3 vicc --type=relay
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/root/virtualsmartcard-0.9/src/vpicc/vicc", line 159, in <module>
    vicc = VirtualICC(args.datasetfile, args.type, hostname, args.port,
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/root/virtualsmartcard-0.9/src/vpicc/virtualsmartcard/VirtualSmartcard.py", line 448, in __init__
    from virtualsmartcard.cards.Relay import RelayOS
  File "/root/virtualsmartcard-0.9/src/vpicc/virtualsmartcard/cards/Relay.py", line 22, in <module>
    import smartcard
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'smartcard'

Looking further into the steps what happen during the build, the error is raised while byte-compiling the python code. If I see right, this is done by invoking the py-compile binary, which is part of the tarball and does not get updated by the system-provided one.

So the workaround is to remove the py-compile from the tarball (can be done as part of the RPM build). The solution should be just to make sure the next release will have updated py-compile.

[frankmorgner]

Not sure how to update or avoid py-compile manually as it is automatically added, see https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Python.html. I guess, this directly depends on the version of autotools that are installed. I could try updating AC_PREREQ, but I'm not sure if that helps...

[Jakuje]

If it is automatically added, I think just rebuilding the tarball with updated automake should do that.

[ManiekGrob86]

for me env PYTHONPATH=$PWD python3 -m pdb vicc.in --type=relay Error: vicc.in does not exist ??? Whats wrong?