[ekalinin]

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the rules behind this checklist.

#374 asks to finish the PEP 517 move and drop setup.py. #338 added the
[build-system] table, but the metadata stayed in setup.py, and the
release was still built by calling setup.py sdist bdist_wheel directly.
That made the sdist depend on the checkout: env-dev has no setuptools-scm,
so setup.py sdist took its file list from the
nodeenv.egg-info/SOURCES.txt left by pip install -e .. Without that
file the 1.12.0 sdist would have had 35 entries instead of 56, and no
tests/__init__.py, tests/nodeenv_test.py or tests/nodejs_index.json.

The metadata now lives in [project] in pyproject.toml, and setup.py
is removed. The backend is still setuptools.build_meta:

• The version is still nodeenv_version in nodeenv.py, read with
  attr, so make deploy-github is unchanged. setuptools-scm stays for
  the sdist file list and does not touch the version, also on a commit
  after the tag.
• The long description is still README.rst followed by CHANGES, now
  declared as text/x-rst, so twine check no longer warns about
  long_description_content_type.
• The license is the SPDX expression BSD-3-Clause (PEP 639), which needs
  setuptools>=77. setuptools refuses a License :: classifier next to
  it, so the classifier is gone.
• make deploy-pypi builds with python -m build, make env uses
  pip install ., and make update-pypi is removed, since PyPI turned
  register off long ago.
• debian-upstream/rules builds the sdist with python -m build --sdist
  and unpacks dist/*.tar.gz. The Debian package itself still targets
  Python 2.7; that is left for a separate change.
• flake8 no longer gets setup.py in tox, CI and CONTRIBUTING.md.

Compared with a build of master, the wheel has the same files,
dependencies, extras, Requires-Python and entry point. METADATA differs
only in the fields [project] writes differently: Project-URL: Homepage
instead of Home-page, a single Author-email, License-Expression
instead of License, Description-Content-Type, and no Platform or
Dynamic lines. The sdist has the same files except setup.py and
nodeenv.egg-info/not-zip-safe, with or without a leftover
nodeenv.egg-info/, and the unit tests pass from it.

Fixes #374

• Tests cover the change (no code change; the builds above check the
  package)
• tox passes: the tests and flake8
• CHANGES has an entry under Version [unreleased], if nodeenv's
  behavior changes
• README.rst is updated, if the change affects what it documents
• The title has the form type(scope): subject

[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

The Debian sdist command fails in a clean build environment because the build frontend is not declared as a Debian build dependency and the legacy /usr/bin/python interpreter cannot run the new setuptools backend.

1 open issue

• Declare Debian build dependencies and use a supported Python 3 interpreter · New

What changed in this PR

This PR completes the PEP 517 packaging migration requested in #374 by moving metadata into pyproject.toml and removing setup.py, while retaining the setuptools backend.

Changes:

• Declares project metadata, extras, entry point, dynamic version and readme, and an SPDX license in pyproject.toml.
• Switches build and installation commands to standards-based frontends.
• Removes obsolete setup.py references from tooling and documents the migration.

File	Description
tox.ini	Removes setup.py from lint targets.
setup.py	Deletes the legacy packaging script.
requirements-dev.txt	Adds the build frontend.
pyproject.toml	Defines package metadata and requires setuptools 77 or later.
Makefile	Uses modern build/install commands and removes PyPI registration.
debian-upstream/​rules	Switches sdist creation to build and extracts gzip archives.
CONTRIBUTING.md	Updates the documented lint command.
CHANGES	Records the packaging migration and backend requirement.
.github/​workflows/​tests.yml	Removes setup.py from CI lint targets.
.coveragerc	Removes the obsolete coverage exclusion.

_{Review effort: Balanced}

[ekalinin]

The Debian packaging is broken before this PR, at the build-dependency
check: neither python from Build-Depends nor python2.7-minimal from
Pre-Depends exists in Debian 12 or 13, so dpkg-buildpackage stops
before rules runs (dpkg-checkbuilddeps on debian:12-slim and
debian:stable-slim reports python as unmet on master).

Moving only the sdist step to Python 3 would not give a package that
builds: DH_VENV_ARGS still creates the virtualenv with /usr/bin/python,
and the package still pre-depends on Python 2.7. This PR only replaces the
setup.py call, so that rules no longer refers to a removed file.
Moving the Debian packaging to Python 3 is out of scope here.