Does not work for PEP-420 native namespace packages

[icemac]

BUG/PROBLEM REPORT

What I did:

Run it on Zope which has zope.interface = 8.0 using bin/checkversions versions-prod.cfg.

What I expect to happen:

It shows 8.0.1 as the new versions.

What actually happened:

The new version got ignored. Only new versions for packages without namespace are shown (e. g. ZODB).

(I also had to manually update to the new major versions beforehand, where I still thought it might be a glitch, but seeing it also does not work for a bugfix version made me create this ticket.)

What version of Python and Zope/Addons I am using:

• Zope - master
• Python 3.11
• z3c.checkversions = 3.0

[icemac]

@dataflake I just learned about this problem. I am nowadays usually using GitHub's Dependabot in combination with vereqsyn (see e. g. zopetoolkit) to update to current Python versions. So I'll not immediately look into this issue.

[mauritsvanrees]

There is also the plone.versioncheck package, which is similar, but with a different take. We use it in the Plone coredev buildout, and weekly run its command in GitHub Actions. See the run from today. At the bottom you can download an artifact with the generated versions.html. This does report new major versions for zope.* packages.

[dataflake]

Thank you for mentioning that. I'll take a look and see if we can use it at least "manually" like we do for the Zope package from time to time. With the change in namespace package setups and the potential issues it's critical to have such a tool right now. I am currently seeing namespace package issues with client projects that use the master branch versions.cfg and had to switch all of them to the versions file for Zope 5.13. I do not know if I can "trust" the pins on master right now.

[dataflake]

plone.versioncheck works fine manually (except it can't parse buildout.cfg in Zope, but it does work running straight against versions.cfg, see plone/plone.versioncheck#56) and the output is much nicer and more meaningful than z3c.checkversions.

I think I will prepare a PR for Zope that integrates plone.versioncheck and throws out z3c.checkversion.

[mauritsvanrees]

I have not used z3c.checkversions for a long time, but I did always like that you could say: show me only bug fix releases, or only feature releases, so you don't get such a long list of possible updates.