Versioning problems for "packaging" python package requirement

[steveri]

Our CI 'aha-flow' has stopped working, because of a python-package version requirement in the docker build. In particular, aha/Dockerfile specifies a specific version 21.3 for the "packaging" package:

  aha/Dockerfile line 95:
    pip install packaging==21.3

This seemed to work fine for a long time, but now it seems to be causing an error later in the build https://buildkite.com/stanford-aha/aha-flow/builds/10718

    #56 12.73 ERROR: requirements-parser 0.11.0 has requirement
     packaging>=23.2, but you'll have packaging 21.3 which is
     incompatible.

I will be submitting a change removing the version requirement for packaging==21.3. My question for the group:

• does anyone know why we had this version-21.3 requirement in the first place?
• is something going to break that you know about and I don't?

[steveri]

Ah! I found this @jack-melchert (below). Looks like it was a temporary fix from two years ago. Now that I have undone the version requirement, in my recent pull request, things seem to be working, so maybe the problem has fixed itself now...(packaging package seems to be on version 24 now) (https://buildkite.com/stanford-aha/aha-flow/builds/10719)

commit daa06759357806d7d57af1856abc6ee7fc2e2d5d
Author: jack-melchert <[email protected]>
Date:   Mon Dec 19 14:05:25 2022 -0800

    Python package packaging version 22 broken
    
    packaging version 22 throws errors when a setup.py has a wildcard
    in the version requirements of a dependency in the install_requires
    list. For now fixing the version of packaging to 21.3.

[steveri]

FIXED by removing the version requirement, see pull request #1950