error: unknown option `recurse-submodules' when using `flit publish`

[drj11]

Looks like flit publish fails if you have git 2.7.4 installed (in my case, this is the git I get from apt install git on Ubuntu 16.04 which is in LTS until 2021-04).

For what it's worth I find all the shenanigans with git a bit surprising and I'm extremely unlikely to upgrade git just to use this tool.

Error log:

(pypng) ac1xdrj@owl:~/prj/pypng/code$ flit publish
error: unknown option `recurse-submodules'
usage: git ls-files [<options>] [<file>...]

    -z                    paths are separated with NUL character
    -t                    identify the file status with tags
    -v                    use lowercase letters for 'assume unchanged' files
    -c, --cached          show cached files in the output (default)
    -d, --deleted         show deleted files in the output
    -m, --modified        show modified files in the output
    -o, --others          show other files in the output
    -i, --ignored         show ignored files in the output
    -s, --stage           show staged contents' object name in the output
    -k, --killed          show files on the filesystem that need to be removed
    --directory           show 'other' directories' names only
    --empty-directory     don't show empty directories
    -u, --unmerged        show unmerged files in the output
    --resolve-undo        show resolve-undo information
    -x, --exclude <pattern>
                          skip files matching pattern
    -X, --exclude-from <file>
                          exclude patterns are read from <file>
    --exclude-per-directory <file>
                          read additional per-directory exclude patterns in <file>
    --exclude-standard    add the standard git exclusions
    --full-name           make the output relative to the project top directory
    --error-unmatch       if any <file> is not in the index, treat this as an error
    --with-tree <tree-ish>
                          pretend that paths removed since <tree-ish> are still present
    --abbrev[=<n>]        use <n> digits to display SHA-1s
    --debug               show debugging data

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ac1xdrj/miniconda3/envs/pypng/bin/flit", line 10, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/home/ac1xdrj/miniconda3/envs/pypng/lib/python3.8/site-packages/flit/__init__.py", line 163, in main
    main(args.ini_file, repository, formats=set(args.format or []),
  File "/home/ac1xdrj/miniconda3/envs/pypng/lib/python3.8/site-packages/flit/upload.py", line 257, in main
    built = build.main(ini_path, formats=formats, gen_setup_py=gen_setup_py)
  File "/home/ac1xdrj/miniconda3/envs/pypng/lib/python3.8/site-packages/flit/build.py", line 46, in main
    sdist_file = sb.build(dist_dir, gen_setup_py=gen_setup_py)
  File "/home/ac1xdrj/miniconda3/envs/pypng/lib/python3.8/site-packages/flit_core/sdist.py", line 182, in build
    files_to_add = self.apply_includes_excludes(self.select_files())
  File "/home/ac1xdrj/miniconda3/envs/pypng/lib/python3.8/site-packages/flit/sdist.py", line 155, in select_files
    for p in vcs_mod.list_tracked_files(self.cfgdir)]
  File "/home/ac1xdrj/miniconda3/envs/pypng/lib/python3.8/site-packages/flit/vcs/git.py", line 7, in list_tracked_files
    outb = check_output(['git', 'ls-files', '--recurse-submodules', '-z'],
  File "/home/ac1xdrj/miniconda3/envs/pypng/lib/python3.8/subprocess.py", line 411, in check_output
    return run(*popenargs, stdout=PIPE, timeout=timeout, check=True,
  File "/home/ac1xdrj/miniconda3/envs/pypng/lib/python3.8/subprocess.py", line 512, in run
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, process.args,
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['git', 'ls-files', '--recurse-submodules', '-z']' returned non-zero exit status 129.
(pypng) ac1xdrj@owl:~/prj/pypng/code$ which git
/usr/bin/git
(pypng) ac1xdrj@owl:~/prj/pypng/code$ git --version
git version 2.7.4
(pypng) ac1xdrj@owl:~/prj/pypng/code$ lsb_release 
No LSB modules are available.
(pypng) ac1xdrj@owl:~/prj/pypng/code$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 16.04.7 LTS
Release:	16.04
Codename:	xenial
(pypng) ac1xdrj@owl:~/prj/pypng/code$ 

[takluyver]

Ugh, sorry, I forgot to check when that flag was introduced, and assumed it was old enough that we could safely rely on it.

That was added in flit 2.3 (see #323). So one workaround is to downgrade to flit 2.2 for making releases until you upgrade Ubuntu & git. You can check the release notes to see if you need any of the fixes in 2.3 or 3.0, but most of them are fairly minor.

[drj11]

downgrading flit should be a good workaround, good idea!

[mikaelho]

Tried uninstalling latest flit and installing ==2.2. Now I get ”No module named 'flit_core.inifile'” when I try to publish. Have tried un- and re-installing flit and flit-core, but no joy, error remains.

[mikaelho]

Never mind, I reinstalled the whole box.

[takluyver]

Tried uninstalling latest flit and installing ==2.2. Now I get ”No module named 'flit_core.inifile'”

Sorry about that, it probably needs an older flit_core as well - i.e. pip install flit==2.2 flit_core==2.2.

[mikaelho]

For the record, I tried several combos of flit and flit-core versions, but the problem persisted.

But now happily flitting away on my up-to-date machine.

[takluyver]

Ubuntu 16.04 is no longer in support, so hopefully everyone now has a new enough version of git to avoid this. If not, you can now describe what you want in your sdist in pyproject.toml and pass a --no-use-vcs flag to skip interacting with git. This will likely become the default in Flit 4.