`python setup.py register` fails if long_description contains RST

[anatoly techtonik]

In my setup.py long_description is read from external reStructuredText file:
    long_description=open('README.rst').read(),

And it gives a traceback when I try to register package on PyPI. See traceback.txt in attach.

Step to reproduce:
1. hg clone https://bitbucket.org/techtonik/python-pager; cd python-pager
2. hg up -r 24
3. python setup.py register

I presume that markup contains errors, but it should not fail with traceback.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: python2.7 2.7.2-5ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-11.50-generic 2.6.38.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-11-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: i386
CheckboxSubmission: b346f016d264f3ef62407d5e29c198a2
CheckboxSystem: daed2f3d6643b4a84b4520a2427f8c2b
Date: Fri Dec 16 23:46:30 2011
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: python2.7
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-02 (75 days ago)

[Jason Conti (jconti)]

Looking at distutils/command/check.py , it subclasses Reporter from docutils/utils.py in python-doctutils to override the system_message method (I guess to stop it from writing output and raising exceptions). But the original system_message method returns a nodes.system_message object, which is used later in docutils/parsers/rst/states.py also in the python-docutils package, and fails because the value is None.

The system message that it is failing on (using https://bitbucket.org/techtonik/python-pager/raw/b8dba77eb4aa/README.rst ) is:

Unknown interpreted text role "func". (at debug level 3)

There is also a previous system message that makes it through before raising the TypeError (at debug level 1):

No role entry for "func" in module "docutils.parsers.rst.languages.en".
Trying "func" as canonical role name.

The fix may be as simple as appending:

return nodes.system_message(message, level=level, type=self.levels[level], *children, **kwargs)

to the system_message method in the SilentReporter class in distutils/command/check.py. This should probably be reported upstream (if it isn't already) so they can take a look at it and work out a proper fix.

[anatoly techtonik (techtonik)]

Thanks for the research. I've opened upstream issue at http://bugs.python.org/issue13614

[Éric Araujo (merwok)]

Thanks for the diagnosis; I will fix this upstream soon-ish.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

fixed in 14.04 LTS and later releases