Direct invocation of setup.py deprecated when uploading package to PyPi

[fligt]

When creating and uploading a package to the Python Package index with the nbdev_pypi I get a warning that direct invocation of setup.py is deprecated and should be avoided.

$ nbdev_pypi 
... 

/home/frank/anaconda3/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/_distutils/cmd.py:66: SetuptoolsDeprecationWarning: setup.py install is deprecated.
!!

        ********************************************************************************
        Please avoid running ``setup.py`` directly.
        Instead, use pypa/build, pypa/installer or other
        standards-based tools.

        See https://blog.ganssle.io/articles/2021/10/setup-py-deprecated.html for details.
        ********************************************************************************

!!  

...

The culprit is in the release_pypi() function here in the first system() call in which the package is created. So actually not in the second system() call where we upload to pypi.org using twine.

def release_pypi(
    repository:str="pypi" # Respository to upload to (defined in ~/.pypirc)
):
    "Create and upload Python package to PyPI"
    _dir = get_config().lib_path.parent
    system(f'cd {_dir}  && rm -rf dist build && python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel') 
    system(f'twine upload --repository {repository} {_dir}/dist/*')

It seems we can fix this with a single line of code. The depreciation warning does not say that we can not use a setup.py file! We just should not invoke it directly from the command line like so: python -m setup.py. Instead I believe we can still build the package files with a setup.py file with the command python -m build.

To my understanding my proposed solution does require that the build package is added as a dependency to nbdev.

Shall I try to create my first pull request?

This issue was also posted here: https://forums.fast.ai/t/will-depreciation-of-setup-py-break-nbdev/109143