While the GoPiGo3 has avoided the “continuous improvement” philosophy that sends us near daily application updates on our phones, the operating systems supported by the Raspberry Pi at the heart of a GoPiGo3 robot have blossomed into a vendor support staff nightmare.
Over the last seven years, I have been reasonably successful at hacking the installation of the GoPiGo3 software stack (hardware interface and examples) for both Raspberry Pi OS versions and Ubuntu versions. Along the way, I have seen more and more warnings about deprecated software in the Python API build process - such as:
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/setuptools/_distutils/cmd.py:66: SetuptoolsDeprecationWarning: setup.py install is deprecated.
!!
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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.
********************************************************************************
!!
self.initialize_options()
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/setuptools/_distutils/cmd.py:66: EasyInstallDeprecationWarning: easy_install command is deprecated.
!!
********************************************************************************
Please avoid running ``setup.py`` and ``easy_install``.
Instead, use pypa/build, pypa/installer or other
standards-based tools.
See https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/917 for details.
********************************************************************************
!!
self.initialize_options()
running bdist_egg
running egg_info
creating DI_Sensors.egg-info
Aside: GoPiGo OS is provided as a complete, working, pre-installed environment sufficient for most users.
Should anyone be willing to accept the mission to modernize the Python GoPiGo3 software installation, this will be a useful guide:
https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/guides/modernize-setup-py-project/
From the guide:
As mentioned, I have managed to hack a sufficient for me install but the use of a 21 year old installation package makes the future look increasingly dark for the GoPiGo3.
I don’t hold much hope that a code warrior will swoop in to accept this mission, but I wanted to offer an insight into a place they could contribute to extending the life of the GoPiGo3 robot for future OS releases.