Failure in very basic example after upgrading from 1.9 to 2.0 on Debian 10 Buster

[limdor]

🐞 bug report

Affected Rule

py_binary, py_library

Is this a regression?

Yes, I never saw such issue before 2.0

Description

Just running a very simple py_binary + py_library, it gives an error

🔬 Minimal Reproduction

https://github.com/limdor/bazel-examples/tree/c3f90d396f240aa84555d1337a225bdbe9375e46/python

🔥 Exception or Error

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "bazel-out/k8-opt-exec-ST-d57f47055a04/bin/hello_world/generator", line 639, in <module>
    main()
  File "bazel-out/k8-opt-exec-ST-d57f47055a04/bin/hello_world/generator", line 544, in main
    print_verbose("bootstrap sys._base_executable:", sys._base_executable)
AttributeError: module 'sys' has no attribute '_base_executable'

🌍 Your Environment

Operating System:

I've seen the issue on Debian 10 Buster
See https://buildkite.com/bazel/limdor-bazel-examples/builds?branch=renovate%2Frules_python-2.x for environement details where it fails

Output of bazel version:

8.5.1

Rules_python version:

2.0.0 and 2.0.1

Anything else relevant?

The error message is like in #3172 but this issue is quite old and not sure if it can be related or not.

[aignas]

It could be failing most likely due to the name of the module that you have. Since in reality very few projects would be named python. Please verify if changing the name fixes the behaviour.

[limdor]

I'll give it a try and let you know.

I agree it should not be a common use case the main workspace or the folder containing the main workspace to be called Python. However in a multi language project I could perfectly imagine a subfolder called Python containing Python bindings or Python specific functionality.

[limdor]

I just took a quick look and I do not think the problem comes from the root module being called python. In the original builds reported in the ticket I have two examples failing with rules_python 2.0 on Debian, one is pure Python and the main folder is called python and the other combines C++ and Python and the main falder is called cpp_and_python. I still tried to rename the cpp_and_python to multilanguageand I'm getting the same error.
limdor/bazel-examples#159
I also deleted the module lock file just in case but that also does not change anything.

[limdor]

I just did a bisect and I could identify the cultprit. The problem is this PR
#3667
Looking at the changes it also makes sense, it added the following statement that it was not there before

print_verbose("bootstrap sys._base_executable:", sys._base_executable)

@rickeylev are you sure that sys._base_executable must be always be available? An easy fix would be to only print the variable if it is available.

[limdor]

Until it is clear if this variable is expected to be in all supported systems, I would propose to just remove the debug log that was added.
I opened two pull requests, one for main and one for the release/2.0 branch:

• fix(system_python): Remove printing of not always present attribute #3781
• fix(system_python): backport Debian 10 Buster bug into 2.0.2 #3782