bdist_wheel fails on WSL Ubuntu 18.04

Edit: --dry-run also results in errors, which I assume is because no directories are actually being created.

Was building a pure Python project using setuptools 49.6.0 in a virtual environment using Python 3.8.2 on WSL Ubuntu 18.04. Running python3 setup.py sdist bdist_wheel causes setup.py to raise an error right after printing running install_scripts to the console, right before it adds the license and starts building the wheel. The error reads as follows (project is called touketsu):

error: [('build/bdist.linux-x86_64/wheel/touketsu-0.1.0-py3.8.egg-info', 'build/bdist.linux-x86_64/wheel/touketsu-0.1.0.dist-info', "[Errno 16] Device or resource busy: 'build/bdist.linux-x86_64/wheel/touketsu-0.1.0.dist-info'")]

Here . would be the repository’s top level directory. Not sure why this is happening; checked the file permissions (rwx for all groups) and even used sudo, but kept getting the same error.

Help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks 😃

[abravalheri]

Hi @phetdam for reporting the problem and also the solution.

I use WSL all the time here and I have never faced such problem. I assume it might be related to the code editor or IDE?

I think we can close this issue now since it does not seem to be related to setuptools directly, but please let me know if I am wrong and I will re-open it (it would be nice to have some dummy repository with a reproduction to try it out).

[GoelPri]

Been a while since I had this issue now that I usually just build wheels on remote CI machines but I think this is a WSL thing and may not necessarily be directly resolvable by tweaking setuptools. As mentioned, try disabling search indexing.

@s27y I also was running VS Code in WSL; with search indexing disabled I could keep VS Code open when building the wheel.

@GoelPri Maybe try @s27y’s workaround first? Again, this might be a WSL issue. Also, if you are interested in distributing wheels, I recommend you get in the habit of using a CI service, ex. through GitHub Actions, and try ensuring your wheel builds on multiple platforms. This usually shouldn’t be too bad unless you have C extensions in your project, in which case I would recommend using cibuildwheel to build manylinux wheels for you. I’ve built manylinux wheels “by hand” before, i.e. with my own hacky shell scripts, and that was definitely a not-fun experience I would like other people to avoid.

Thank you so much! It works now