TST/DEP: circular dependency with astropy-asdf makes lowest graph resolution unworkable #18992

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1. neutrinoceros

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   on Nov 25, 2025
2. neutrinoceros

   added a parent issue on Nov 25, 2025

   • TST: towards reproducible builds for oldestdeps #18782
3. neutrinoceros

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4. neutrinoceros commented on Nov 27, 2025

   

   neutrinoceros

   on Nov 27, 2025

   Last edited by neutrinoceros

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   Turns out, this isn't a bug in uv as I previously assumed. An old version of astropy is retrieved from PyPI because tox+tox-uv installs dependencies first, and as a separate step, before installing the project itself. In this context, uv's behavior is indeed correct. I'm now exploring ways I can work within existing tox behavior¹, and it looks difficult as well:

   • tox exposes a install_command option, but it's already overriden by the tox-uv plugin, so I can't really customize it without changing tox-uv itself
   • the install_command is dynamically computed to include options from {opts}, but this doesn't seem like a public interface, more like an implementation detail for very narrowly scoped options like pip_pre, so I don't think I can use it either
   • I tried adding a constraint on astropy itself in tool.uv.constraint-dependencies but that won't work because uv recognizes astropy as the project and cannot apply constraints to it (which seems like a very reasonable and intentional limitation)

   The only solution I'm seeing right now (other than dropping support for asdf-astropy, which of course wouldn't be acceptable), is to bump our lower bound on asdf-astropy to >=0.7, the oldest version whose lower bound on astropy (>=5.2.0) has wheels for Python 3.11, our current oldest supported Python. Clearly this is a mouthful, a fragile solution, and to some extent, purely a hack around tox's implementation details. As a last resort, I'll propose it nonetheless, together with this explanation, and see what others think.

   Footnotes

   1. for the record, I feel like it's needlessly complex, and in this instance, it is making my work more difficult and really not playing its role as a dev helper tool. ↩
5. neutrinoceros

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   on Nov 27, 2025
6. pllim

   closed this as completedin #19002on Nov 28, 2025